Column: Behind closed doors

Today I had my debut column for RTV Purmerend's Purplus program. It went as follows

Behind Closed Doors: As the nearly 70-year-old, child-loving Grandpa Ed babbles on about his life, I think about Sonja. My beautiful ex-girlfriend with Eastern European roots from 2006. She struck out as I lay on the ground at the gas station near our house, motionless as I lay there. I defended, sure, but gave her more than enough space to continue expressing her emotion. The police came, and almost ex officio Sonja was taken away. I tried to explain that I would work it out with Sonja, that the best thing we could do was go home. It wasn't the first time. Crazy how long I was able to accept that. Love makes blind.

Grandpa Ed continues his story and talks -as if it were yesterday- about his time in the army, his driving schools and his beautiful ex-wife whom he affectionately calls "my M. In fits and starts, the sometimes almost uncontrollable emotions come to him as he talks about the last 15 years of his life.

'In 2015 alone, I reported 26 times to the police Michel. Just look.' 'And they do absolutely nothing!" roars Ed at me with an increasingly red face. In front of us are piles of papers and playing in the background are audio recordings of phone calls and meetings that Ed has secretly recorded over the past few years.

Ed currently lives in a small room in the Jaap van Praaghuis, but has a problem in his former home situation. According to Ed, he and his wife are terrorized at home by their children. His grandchild, Ed says -with tears in his eyes- was regularly beaten black and blue by his son. Often the police came to the door, but they don't take action. 'I can't watch it anymore Michel.'

By their own account, the police do nothing with Ed's 26 reports. The Safety House and many other agencies also seem to stand by and watch things explode. Meanwhile, Ed is becoming increasingly distraught. His constant calls for attention, and the way Ed brings this up, do not help. Purmerend's town hall is officially off limits to Grandpa Ed and he has not been welcome at the police station for ages.

"Then listen! Ed lets me hear one of his audio recordings on which a police officer agrees with him that Ed is solving the problem himself. It was only last year that Grandpa Ed felt he had to take matters into his own hands. 'My wife was stabbed with a knife Michel, by her son! I was an animal Michel, I was an animal ... I'm ashamed.' It only lasted a few minutes, but in those few minutes when Ed lost control, he tackled his son so hard that he had to be carted off to the hospital with multiple broken bones.

This story is not an isolated one. Nearly half of everyone between the ages of 18 and 70 will experience domestic violence at some point. Annually, 100,000 perpetrators create, 200,000 victims when it comes to more severe domestic violence. In only 12% of the cases it leads to an arrest. Child abuse occurs more than 119,000 times a year in the Netherlands.

Whatever actually happened behind the closed doors at Ed's home is irrelevant when you consider that the problem is not solved. And if there may have been a problem in Grandpa Ed's homes before, a new one has now been added. The distraught Ed is boiling, and it doesn't take much for this short fuse to explode. And if before then agencies have not intervened, then not only I, but also the perpetrator himself, fear that there is a chance that in a few months we will have to read in the newspaper how a family tragedy could have been prevented, because "it was a problem family known to agencies."

We should not dwell on domestic violence, but we should do something about it. The thought of hundreds of families in our region having to live in fear and violence should be unacceptable.