Yvonne Keuls: 'By writing about those abused children, I have shown others what it is'

This week the 98th title of Yvonne Keuls will be published. A book she had to write, about her foster child Gemmetje. Just as she had to tell all those other unjust stories, including about child abuse by high-ranking people. "If I see the law being tampered with, I stand up."

Yvonne Keuls turns 90 next month, but that doesn't mean she gets few Whatsapp messages. In fact, "it goes on throughout the day," she says. She shows the baby photos that appear in the family app: one of her three great-grandchildren. “I have three daughters of my own, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. I eat that. They all have cauliflower ears because I nibbled on them.'

Three daughters of your own, you say. Why?

'Because I've also had some foster children over the years. One of them stayed in my life for 25 years, that's Gemmetje. It took me quite a while to write about her, but it had to happen, I've known that for twenty years, since her death. I have never laughed with anyone as much as with that creature. Maybe with my mother. And you know what it is: if you really laugh with someone, you never forget it – you can't put your finger on it, but if you can really laugh with each other, the bond goes under the skin.'

The novel that Keuls wrote about that 'creature', Gemmetje Victoria , will be published this week. It is her 98th title. A book in the vein of the 'social novels' that are among her greatest successes, and which are still read today: The rotten life of Floortje Bloem (1982), The mother of David S. (1980) and Jan Rap en z' nmaat (1977), in which Gemmetje (as Gemma) also plays one of the leading roles.

Stories about real young people, whom Keuls got to know when she worked as a social worker in The Hague. She started a shelter in 1972 with an enthusiastic group of people, and Gemmetje walked in just like that. 'She said, 'Hey you, you tall one with your long legs, you can do something for me, 'cause you're not here to pick your nose, are you? Well then.' Then I had to make her coffee. She was completely dressed up, beautiful clothes – stolen everything, of course, Gemtje never bought anything in her life. I think it's crazy to say, but I loved her right away.'

In fact, you could say that Cologne, on the basis of the eventful and tragic life of Gemmetje, shows how 'an entire group' has gone. 'I have been involved in youth care for forty years. It didn't work then and it still doesn't, is my sad conclusion. A child who is placed out of home has to deal with dozens of different care providers. One child tells his whole story to a counselor and the next time there is another one. And the next time.'

Why did you ever get involved with these youths when you had a flourishing writing career?

'I made television adaptations of work by Vestdijk and Couperus and had great success with them, but I was working with paper people. It was not satisfying. Plus, I had three teenage daughters, and I found myself alienating from them by being involved with 1900 characters. My daughters went to Frank Zappa and I thought, Who is Frank Zappa? I thought I was moving in the wrong direction. I was not appreciated in the television business why I wanted to be appreciated.'

Did you deny yourself?

'Something like that, yes. So in my thirties I started working with addicted young people, then we started the shelter. With Jan Rap and his mate , my book about that shelter, I have shown how the lives of these young people work. I turned it into a play that has been shown everywhere for ten years, all the way to Australia, it has been successfully filmed. But the house has collapsed due to its own success, after a year we were bankrupt. Gemmetje came into my house for a short time.'

What had Gemtje gone through when she came into your life?

“She was 17 – or so she said. Gemmetje's mother was a teenager in a strict Catholic environment near Nijmegen, the child had been taken from her and taken to the nuns, she would receive a proper Catholic upbringing. But Gemmetje has been dragged from one home to another. She was in seventeen children's homes, eight private foster homes and three psychiatric institutions. She has been abused everywhere. Her first experience has been the most severe. When she first started having her period, there was a group leader who fished the sanitary napkin out of her pants, put it in her mouth, taped her mouth shut and raped her. A psychiatrist, Theo Finkensieper, worked in the youth institution in Zetten who abused girls. He made a mistake about Gemmetje, because she was the first to report him. Then she had to flee, because he had many important friends. Finally, much later, Finkensieper was sentenced to six years in prison. Abuse at a young age leaves deep marks. Although she didn't really talk about it, you can feel it, you notice it. The door always had to be locked, with a chair against it. Gemtje didn't really want to sleep alone, she knew where to find people to scold. She has been turned away, run away, fled everywhere. But she didn't want to leave our house anymore.' she knew how to find people to scoff against. She has been turned away, run away, fled everywhere. But she didn't want to leave our house anymore.' she knew how to find people to scoff against. She has been turned away, run away, fled everywhere. But she didn't want to leave our house anymore.'

In the afterword you write: 'I sincerely hope that youth care, which plays a major role in this, will be deeply ashamed when this book is read by them.'

'Yes, I hope so. Deep shame is the first thing to do, the very first thing. A man is a man, and a man can be touched. Youth care is also available. When they read about Gemmetje's life, they think, I am convinced of that: damn it, we have left a lot here after all. When things go wrong with a child, the authorities often blame the child: the child is unmanageable, the child is damaged, the child wants revenge, the child just talks or exaggerates. New! I say: the child speaks the truth. That truth can sometimes be hyped because no one is listening and the child has to tell it again, and again. But still: the child always speaks the truth. All the time. If you assume that, you have a different approach. I have often sat before judges as an expert witness in cases involving juveniles with whom I had dealt. Then I was interrogated for 40 minutes, that judge listened to me, and I felt that he thought: yes yes, it will be okay. I've never seen a judge stand up and say, 'Jesus madam, how awful. When Gemmetje once had to appear in court as an adult woman, I was also summoned to tell who Gemmetje was, what she had been through. So I started, I told about the homes, the foster homes, the horror story with the sanitary towel. Gemmetje's lawyer asked for another example. And that judge asked if I could keep it functional. Without any empathy. Should a judge have empathy? Not always, maybe, not when you're dealing with a villainous criminal.

Why did Gemtje have to go to court then?

'Let me think, because I've been through a lot of business with her. This was the drug smuggling from Suriname, which I am convinced was out of silliness. Little Gem has done a lot of shit, but this time she really thought she was getting Easter eggs.'

There will be readers who think: that is very naive of Mrs. Keuls.

"I don't care, I'm just telling you how it is."

You said: I had to write about her. Why did it have to be?

'Because I didn't think it was right that she died at the age of 40, after everything that happened to her. I thought it was unfair and never really resigned myself to it. She should have turned 80, could have been of great importance, because she knew how to attract good people and had enormous energy. She really could have made a difference, she wanted to set up a shelter herself.'

Did you want to pay tribute to Gemmetje?

'Maybe. I might not say it that way myself, but it actually is. I love survivors, that's why I loved the girl Floortje Bloem, the underage heroin whore who wants her stuffed rabbit back, goes looking for it and finds it. That's how I saw Gemmetje. But she did not survive: she got lung cancer at a young age and declared herself cured while she was very ill. Out of fear. What I want to tell people in this book is: don't give up. It took me more effort than other books because I didn't want to talk nonsense. Everything is documented, there was a huge Action bag with all the documents here. And my age plays a role. I said to myself: what are you waiting for, until you're 100?'

You never thought: I'm 89, I'm going to sit comfortably with my legs up?

'New. That's not in it, with me.'

What did your husband and daughters think of you taking Gem into your home?

'My children thought she was unique. I have always discussed everything with my husband and children, and they have always known that this was not just a whim of mine. Working with those children was a, um – I don't want to sound Catholic, but I can't think of a better word: a mission, an assignment. You understand?'

No order from above, anyway.

'From above, I have nothing to do with that. It came from within. I thought: I can do it and I will do it. I think it has something to do with the war. I was 8 when the war started and I have always resisted in my mind. I saw what happened and I wrote about it in my diary: this is not possible, this is unjust. Bicycles were requisitioned, blankets, radios. That feeling of resistance arose and grew during the war. I just couldn't do much with it. I got TB. After the war, as a 13-year-old, I spent a year in a sanatorium. In a room with others, man to man, away from my family, because visitors were not welcome. The scars are still on my lungs.'

Your father also had tuberculosis, but his condition was even worse.

'My father was really doomed. My father was a Jewish boy, Samuel Bamberg, you don't get them more Jewish. He was an engineer and a talented musical person. During the raid on 21 November 1944, before the Hunger Winter, he was taken from the house, but in the truck he got lung haemorrhages, and then they threw him out, because they thought: he will infect us all later. Then he walked home. Two days later he took two tubes of sleeping pills, twice twenty tablets of sonoril. We found him.'

Why did he do that?

“He left a letter saying he didn't want to eat his children's food. And, I'll tell you: I was 12 and I understood. He was very ill and with the medicines that were available at the time, he would not get better. I was the youngest of the four children at home – my job was to look after my mother, because my mother was an Indian woman, a half-Javanese woman, who had no idea what kind of country this was. We had come to Holland from Batavia in 1938 and she was never able to get used to it. And then a war! She didn't understand. I had to take her on my neck. I barely had time to dwell on my father's death. I was never a child, never.'

Your husband Rob was in Japanese camps during the war. Did you talk to him about the war?

“I could handle it better than him. I had opportunities to respond in the war. I was able to take a sled to the Westland to exchange my mother's fur coat for a lump of butter. You feel like you can do something. My husband was surrendered. From the age of 13 he has seen all the Jap camps you can think of inside. My husband's oldest brother was hung by his legs for 24 hours in the blazing sun. He saw it and couldn't do anything, I've never experienced such atrocities. Rob is 93, clear-headed and we still laugh at each other. He has defects, though – he has a walker at home and a scooter on the street. He can still climb stairs, because he has strong arms and shoulders, but his legs are difficult. Through the Japanese camp. He has had festering wounds, all the veins are scarred.

She gets up from the kitchen table and walks to the desk, every square inch of which is filled with picture frames, there are dozens of them. On the wall behind the desk are more photos, some with silver duct tape: ancestors, father, mother, children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. She returns with a vacation photo of her and Rob: him in Speedo, she in bikini. “Here he was 36 and all gray. But other than that: nothing has changed. That's how I still see him.'

When you got married you had to stop working. How did you like that?

'Of course it wasn't for me. Before my marriage I was a teacher at a primary school in the Schilderswijk, I had a class with 53 students. When I was 22, I married Rob. The next day I came to school and there was another one. I was fired because married women were not allowed to work at that time. Then we had kids, the first when I was 24, then two more after that, within five years. There were no crèches, no babysitters and no kindergartens. We were in a small apartment on the periphery of The Hague, we didn't have a car. I thought: this shouldn't go on like this. I knew I had other abilities. And I tapped into that by writing.'

I understood that you absolutely did not want that third pregnancy.

'Of course not. Who wants a third pregnancy? My husband studied economics and was a project manager in a machine factory during the day. I was all alone. A funny neighbor said, 'If you want to miscarry, you have to jump 75 times off the counter. Just like jumping into water.' I think I jumped ten times, and then I lay with my jaw on the ground. I stopped, and luckily I had my third child. I'm very honest with my daughters about it, you know, and they laugh. I have a tremendous bond with all three.'

In 1985, Keuls published the book that changed her life: Annie Berber and the grief of a tender criminal . A social novel, this time about the squatters' world, but with a storyline about a boy who is abused by a juvenile judge. The book was based on facts. She did not mention the name of the judge, but it was on the street before it was published, after which Keuls became the target of a wave of criticism. Also in the Volkskrant. On the day my book came out, it contained an interview with the Attorney General of the Supreme Court, in which my name was smeared. The accusation was that I would do it for the money, that I helped such a story into the world to sell more books. Incomprehensible, how can you say it? If there's one thing you hit me with, that's it. Because it's so unfair. And such is then said by the highest judge of the land. He was not the only one, I was being hacked into from judicial circles. Justice was a man's world, you must not forget that, it was not appreciated that a woman brought this up. And that attack had an effect. My books were practically silenced in the major newspapers from that moment on. It was unjust.'

The juvenile judge in question was a friend of yours.

'A fantastic man, who was on the board of the shelter where I worked. I saw him daily. And I never thought for a moment that he was in that field. I really saw him as a good friend.'

Can you be a wonderful man and abuse children?

“He was a fantastic man with a defect. As a juvenile judge, you are the most important man in those children's lives because you have so much to say about them. You cannot abuse that. I heard from boys that he even brought them to the Hall of Justice on Saturdays, that he abused them there, took pornographic pictures of them and beat them with a whip, that he waived sentences in exchange for sexual services. I was confidant of I don't know how many guys and they all told me the same thing. I didn't believe it, I thought: those boys want revenge because that man put them in a penitentiary or I don't know what. But at a certain point I couldn't avoid it anymore.'

When could you no longer avoid it, what was the turning point?

'When his son Marnix Rueb, the cartoonist (known for Harry from The Hague, ed.), came to me, and told me that he had been abused by his father since he was 5 years old. I think he thought it was getting out of hand. He said, "It has to stop, and you're the only one who can do something about it." He knew that I worked in the shelter and that boys from the shelter came to his father's house. He couldn't do it himself, he couldn't report his father. Marnix suffered a lot under his father, so much, you could just see that from him. My sense of justice was seriously affected. What I blame myself is that I did not approach the juvenile court and said: get yourself treated. Then he could have stopped himself. But I chose the other route, in 1981 I filed a report. Within a week, the case was dropped, scandalously enough. The judge, who was then in his early 60s, was honorably discharged, there was a reception. Nothing was investigated but the judge was relieved of his position. Then I incorporated the story into my book.'

You don't portray the boys it happens to as unwilling victims.

“They weren't, they weren't just poor bastards, they were bad boys too. They blackmailed the judge, they also took advantage of him, by taking money from him. My friend was completely taken in. That, of course, makes it worse. The law must not be blackmailed.'

When the book was out, did Marnix come back to you?

'Not really. I saw him sometimes. Once we were on stage together in Diligentia, because we were both nominated for Hagenaar of the Year. And then suddenly he grabbed my hand. But he wasn't the kid to give me loud applause. Moreover, it was of course a great sadness for him.'

How did your immediate environment react to the book?

“Everyone sided with that poor, amiable judge. I had no friends left, the only one who stood behind me was my husband. He, and the husband of my friend Hella Haasse, Jan van Lelyveld, who was a judge in The Hague. He knew about the abuse and had resigned because of the abuses at the judiciary. It was all in a letter to the Attorney General, of which he gave me a copy. That letter stated that children were beaten with a stick and whip at the Palace of Justice. That letter was the confirmation of my story, if I had revealed the letter my life would have turned out differently. Because I believed Van Lelyveld would become. Jan allowed it, only Hella did not want me to reveal that letter. And I didn't, because that would have cost me my friendship with Hella. But of course the whole thing didn't help our friendship. A bit of stubbornness has come from my side, towards Hella.'

You asked her to receive the first copy of the book, she refused. Do you understand that, in retrospect?

“I said, 'You've got to take that first instance, because if you do, as a judge's wife, you're showing that you don't agree with that case just being dropped. And she said no. I could imagine something, but not much. I'm a fighter, she's different. She didn't want to jeopardize her quiet life. I also asked Maarten 't Hart to openly support myself. Oh god, that Martin. No, he was more interested in his goat and his vegetable garden, he said, he didn't want to burn his fingers. I thought: sucker. But he was the one who, decades later , defended Lucia de B. (the nurse suspected of multiple murders, ed.) . I think there is growth in a person.'

In 2018 a documentary was released about the life of Marnix Rueb, after he died of lung cancer. In it, friends and family told about the abuse by his father and the dismissal of the report was also discussed.

“Yeah, that's the first time it's been confirmed. But even after that, no one stood up and said: it is time for Jan van Lelyveld and Yvonne Keuls to make amends.'

You published a reissue of the book in 2014, with the letter from Jan van Lelyveld in it. Because you wanted reparation?

“Because I had been horribly reviled, and this was my way of putting it right. Hella had told me on her deathbed that I could publish Jan's letter. The time was also ripe for it. Society has started to think very differently about pedophilia.'

About pedophilia you said in 1985: 'Who am I to judge whether someone is harmed by it? I have heard many times that this kind of love is the only love such a child has had.'

'The girl Floortje Bloem has always said that the pedophile Gerben was the only one who ever gave her love. He gave her the rabbit.'

Is that love?

'She said that. I do not know the answer.'

You brought even more cases to the fore, including those of the Nijmegen juvenile judge Thomas van der V. He was convicted.

'A journalist came to me with a number of boys who told me that they had been abused by a juvenile court judge in Nijmegen. They knew me from that other case and asked for advice. I said: file a report, but: separately from each other. It was about eleven boys. So they did. He was given six months' probation and immediately left for Portugal.'

Are you still being approached by victims?

'Yes, still. If they feel they have nowhere to turn, they come to me. Take Robert van de Luitgaarden, who came to me and said he was being abused by the director of the Catholic Child Protection Foundation in The Hague. I asked him to describe the place where that happened, the office. I went to the director, he was an acquaintance of mine, and I saw the office, exactly as Robert had described it to me. I opened the cupboard, and it was full of attributes. It was right. Robert has filed a report, but the man has not been convicted. Later Robert did receive compensation, but he is a destroyed person.'

Are you still in business?

'Yes. But I'm not going to talk about that until I can prove anything and there's no trial. I have lines with Argos , the VPRO program that has made two broadcasts about ritual child abuse.'

Your publications and statements about child abuse by seniors are also cited by all kinds of conspiracy theorists, sometimes in extreme quarters. How do you feel about that?

'If at all possible, they bring me in, but I don't do that. For me it's about what I've been through and what I know.'

You were in a broadcast about child abuse by Café Weltschmerz, a platform where conspiracy theorists find shelter, and on which all kinds of nonsense about corona is thrown into the world.

'I don't want anything to do with those corona conspiracies. I was just about the first in the Netherlands to be vaccinated. I didn't say much on that broadcast, but what I said is true. I don't speculate, I deal with facts, with business. Not with conspiracies. I also have suspicions, but I can't prove them, so I won't comment on them.'

What has it brought you, your meddling with these children?

'I cannot speak of satisfaction. I don't want the law to be tampered with, that's all, and when I see it happening, I stand up. When I was 40 I thought I could solve all the problems myself, so I started working as a counselor. That was naive. Only later did I understand: I have to write about those children. So they became paper people after all – and that was good, because that's how I showed others how it works. If there's one thing I've accomplished, it's that.'

Are you proud of it?

'New. I am fulfilling what I have set myself as a task.'

Will there be a new book?

Chews a speculoos biscuit. Monter: 'I don't know. This may be my last book, but I say that after every book. It's my 98th title, isn't it.'

Do you actually notice that you are almost 90?

'I don't notice, no. I'm fine.'

Are you doing anything to stay healthy?

'Eat cookies! And doing what I stand behind is important to me. I never want to feel like I've missed something. Just, go, do it. It may also be my weakness that I don't have a brake.'

Why do you think that is a weak point?

'Because it's good to have a brake. When I hear that someone has a burnout, I think: great! Burn me out! But it doesn't happen to me. It would have been good if I had occasionally said: and now we're going away for the weekend, do something fun. We did, sometimes, but the initiative always came from Rob. And then he let me do it, thankfully. They used to say to me: you are so busy, you are not getting old. Well, you see! But I do have the same feeling as with all my other books. This was the last. That's crazy, isn't it?'