I must sadly confess that I have a hard life behind me. I have past the half-a-century line and I am past fifty years old now.  But I can’t say I have had a nice life.
I come from a simple working-class family. My father was a hard working man but my mother was a quite different story . When I was 7 years old she took me to a pedofile man who abused me. These things happened to me till I started to get breasts and I wasn’t interesting for  these animals anymore. It left some bad scars in my soul. Did I ever got over that? No, I didn’t. I carried it with me as a heavy burden inside of me. The grief never left me.
The pain really never leaves you.
When I was 16 years old I quickly got myself into a relationship with some young man just to get out of my elderly house. What started as a nice relationship soon changed into  a violent experience. I got beaten up badly by this guy. Nevertheless we did get a child together: a daughter.
The relationship ended when he abused our little daughter. He was arrested but released from prison after some months because Dutch law says that a 2 year old daughter can not testify against her father. It’s really true.  It left me with a real bad taste in my mouth. I left him with my daughter and got into the next bad relationship. Somehow I seemed to attract bad men into my life. I guess I wasn’t very lucky as for that was concerned.  This new man I lived with for several years. We even got a child together. My second daughter. However it was a very painful ( literally) relationship. I got even worse beatings from this guy. He broke my jaw and a lot more bones in my body. I tried to leave him several times and searched for help at a shelter home for abused women. I took my children with me. But after a while my daughters convinced me to go back home again. So I did. Sometimes you can live in a sort of cocoon. A oneway tunnel wich seems to be hard to get out of.  In those years my life was a downward spiral.  And as if fate seemed to put some bad omen upon me this guy also abused my daughter. Again I went to the police and they did arrest this guy too. They told me he was bound to go to prison for years but in the end he got away with some 4 months prison . I was baffeld. I lost my fate in the police and the judicial system.
I got into a relation with a younger guy. Though he was younger than me I did marry him. Life when downwards real fast after that. This guy lived on the dark side of life.
I got into some really bad things. It all exploded when one evening my eldest daughter told me shivering and crying that she was raped by a housefriend of my husband. Something in my mind snapped at that moment and I could only think of one thing: kill him. This was one time too many and nobody should ever touch my daughter again.
I killed this man who raped my daughter. As murder is not allowed I was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. My two daughters where taken away from me and were brought to childcare . I went to prison and lost my daughters. Life was real dark in those years .
The years in prison were really hard for me. But I managed to keep my head straight up .
That attitude of me caused some real bad collisions with prison authorities and I must say that it made prisonlife to a real hell for me.
Inside the pen my physical condition deteriorated too untill it came to a point when I lost the ability to walk and ended up in a wheelchair.
When I got out of prison I married a man I met and I am still married to him.
He is an artist and musician.
I got into contact with my daughters again who were by that time grown-up women.
Sadly to say that the loss of their mother hadn’t done them very much good.
My youngest daughter had gotten herself into some very bad affairs and she had two litlle childeren. One day she brought them to me and asked me if I could take care of them.
So my husband and I did. And that was back in 2003 and they still live with us. We have been taken care of them with all our love. In 2006 the judge gave me custody over the children.
So now I am a grandmother who takes care of her two grandchildren.
In 2010 I was approached by a documentary-maker, a woman who asked me if I wanted to become a subject in one of her documentaries. Her name was Jessica Villerius. She told me she wanted to make a series of documentaries about women who were sentenced for murder but in such a way that the woman’s own story would be the focus of the documentary.  I tought about that for  awhile because to bring it all into the open was a very serious matter. Not many people knew about my lifestory. On the other hand one cannot changed or erase one’s own past. What happened in my life just happened. And perhaps if I told my story maybe other women, who would live in the same circumstances as I did way back at that time, could perhaps learn from my mistake and just pick up their stuff and leave and not do what I did. I just isn’t worth it. You get revenge but lose everything in your life.
I mean, if I only could open the eyes of a few women it would serve it’s purpose I guess.
So I decided to cooperate with the documentary-maker.
On May 9th 2011 it was broadcasted nationwide on NET5 television channel.
That’s in the Netherlands.
(foto invoegen van De Wereld draait door)
Meanwhile my lawyer asked me to consider to write a book about my life as he told me he had a publisher who was interested in my life’s story.
And I did that too. I wrote a manuscript and gave it to him and perhaps this year in 2011 it will be published.
I just really want to make it very clear that I never intentionally had the desire to contact some filmmaker and it never occured to me to write a book about my life.
I was asked to cooperate with the filmmaker and was asked to write a book.
Let that be very clear.
And moreover, it really took me some time to come to the decision to cooperate.
It was my past and my burdens and I carried it already with me for so many long years.
Why bother other people with my misery?
But I also must confess that somehow in a strange and peculiar way getting it into the open brought me some inner peace.
Telling my story in the documentary and writing it down in a manuscript released me somehow of this heavy burden.
I feel more at rest now.
I have peace with it now.
My life was hard sometimes and into the paintings I make I always release some of my intense emotions.
Painting also helps me to translate my sometimes hefty emotions into forms and shapes and colors and composition on a canvas.
I always leave something of myself in a painting.
What can I say: this is who I am.
Life itself shaped me into the woman I am today: a mother and grandmother who raises her two grandchildren and tries to make the best out of life.

 

This book describes the life of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary life. Willeke Meijer was born in 1959 in Rotterdam and as a 7 year old  girl she was rented to pedophiles by her own mother. As a teenager girl of 16 years old she entered into a relationship, that resulted into a marriage. At the age of 18 her first daughter was born. The relationship culminated into the arrest of the father on account of sexual abuse of his own daughter. After divorcing this man she entered into a relationship, that did her end up in a horror story of extremely serious and  gross physical and sexual abuse. During this relationship her second daughter was born.  But this relationship also ended with the arrest of this man after alleged sexual abuse of his stepdaughter. After this she entered into a relationship with a younger man, with whom she also married, and who pulled her along in a negative spiral of drug use. During this relationship she got to know a friend of her husband’s family. This elderly man set himself up as a compassionate listener, who seemed to be open for all her life suffering, what she had experienced from her early childhood years on. But he appeared to act out of self-interest and misused the trust she had giving him by pulling her into a violent SM relationship. After the man also raped her daughter, that was to her the last straw that broke the camel’s back. She entered a sort of daze and killed the man with help of a friend of her then-husband.  After her arrest she was sentenced to twelve years of imprisonment.  The book describes subsequently the years of detention, in which after a while she became the victim  of the tunnel vision of prison personnel and prison directors and wardens. It became a nightmare whereby at a given moment she was saved by the intervention and interference of the at the time Group chairman of the Socialist Party in the Second Chamber of the Dutch House of Parliament, Jan Marijnissen, and the well known publicist and journalist Bert Voskuil. The book also describes the relationship between her and her two daughters of which she says herself, that “ because of her act and her conviction she not only lost her freedom but also her two daughters”.  The book also describes some current affairs, which occurred after her detention.  Among which the upbringing of her two grandchildren, her art and the request of Dutch documentary filmmaker Jessica Villerius to act as the main character in an episode of a documentary series called “Murderous women”.  This was broadcasted on May 9, 2011 by the Dutch television channel Net5 in the Netherlands. After this she appeared several times in publicity in the media. Thus an interview with her appeared in the annex  called “Woman” of the Dutch daily newspaper  the Telegraaf ( The Telegraph) on September 10, 2011 and she was asked by the Dutch television channel NTR to appear in the television broadcasts on October 5, 2011 and March 21, 2012 of the then television program  “5on2”. Worth mentioning is also, that already in 1999 a television documentary was made about the experiences of Willeke Meijer during her period of detention, named  “Met voorbedachte rade” ( With premeditation) .  This documentary was at the time made by Christine van der Aar and Remco van Westerloo and which was broadcasted by the Dutch television channels SBS6 and Net5. The book “My youth murdered” is a gripping story about a woman whose life path wasn’t always a bed of roses. Her motivation to put this all on paper is, that by doing so she hopes to open people’s eyes for the suffering that can be done to children and women.  And to motivate people, who witness this, to actually intervene or to indicate offenders to the police. So victims do not make the mistake, that unfortunately she herself did make at a low point in her life. The book is packed with photos and fragments from original documents. A book well worth reading!

 

Table of contents

Preface …………………………………………………….
Mirror image ………………………………………………..
On colors and nuns ……………………………………….
Sold for 900 guilders………………………………………
The entire roof flew off …………………………………..
Meubelstreet 9 ……………………………………………..
The death of granny Truus ………………………………..
An unintended movie star …………………………………
X + Y + …..? ………………………………………………
Little White…………………………………………………
A summer fair disappointment …………………………….
Big granny and the whip of grandpa Van der Burght……
Bertus Broer………………………………………………..
The Austrian mountains……………………………………
Married to Bertus Broer……………………………………
The birth of Brenda………………………………………..
Divorced from Bertus………………………………………
My acquaintance with Vincent…………………………….
The true face of Vincent…………………………………..
The first miscarriage………………………………………..
Moved to the Pieter Langendijkstreet at Spangen…………
Brenda’s epilepsy ………………………………………….
The birth of Wendy…………………………………………
By trial and error……………………………………………
With Idi Amin in the White village…………………………
Away from Idi Amin ……………………………………….
The hatred germinated ………………………………………
And then came the darkness………………………………..
The last drop that made my bucket spill……………………
The downfall ……………………………………………
Penitentiary Institution for Women (PIW) Overmaze …
Court cases ………………………………………………
Prison life in PIW Overmaze at Maastricht …………….
Cervical cancer ………………………………………….
The PIW at Breda ……………………………………….
The PIW at Zwolle ………………………………………
Also the nice things ……………………………………..
If your body no longer wants …………………………..
The PIW Amerswiel at Heerhugowaard ………………..
The FOBA (Forensic Observational Counseling Ward)..
The State Investigation Department (Rijksrecherche)….
The Carousel towards the end of detention…………….
My children ……………………………………………..
My grandchildren………………………………………..
Murderous women……………………………………….
My art…………………………………………………….
Epilogue…………………

 

Preface

 

This is my story. As I write this, in the year 2012, I now am a woman of fifty-two years old. Something more than half a century I am standing in this life. What I have become mainly comes from what I have lived through as a child and what has been done to me as a child by adults. When, as a child, you are raped and sexually abused it causes such a pain, such a rending pain. But greater still than the physical pain is the pain, when you realize, that your life doesn’t cease. That you don’t die of it. But that your life goes on. Not to die, but to keep on living, that aches most. That realization only comes full as you grow older. Because the pain, that inner pain, you carry that along a lifetime. Day in and day out. That pain in your soul will never disappear. It’s like a pain against which physicians have no remedy,  no medications, no pills. Sometimes you tuck it away, far away in a little dark room inside your soul. But then suddenly something very small and unreal happens through which you suddenly feel it again. Through which the pounding memories come up again. Spirits, ghosts from the distant past. Until you have become fifty-two years old.
To murder someone is bad. That I was surely taught. That I nevertheless did it was because of the last straw. The last straw that breaks the camel’s back. Like the last drop that made my bucket spill. That hatred in my heart, that burning desire for revenge at that one moment of pent up ache, which I carried along inside of me for so many years, exploded in the fuddle of  “feeling nothing anymore”;  and yet still also so much again! If you get away with murder depends of who you are. If you kill in the name of the law or in defense of your country, then it can be justified or rewarded with a medal. When you kill out of revenge it is premeditated murder. I didn’t want to get away with it. On the contrary, I waited for three weeks for my arrest.  I waited for it. I knew it was going to happen. I have been punished, for what I have done, with twelve years imprisonment. And my two daughters were punished along with me. I served my sentence. My debt to society, I have redeemed. Only society doesn’t realize that!
LaReina is the name south American women gave me in prison. They gave me that name, because they felt, that I was like a mother to them and because they saw me as their queen in a kingdom of misery. Ever since, I wear that name with pride. I also use that name as my artist name. I sign my paintings with the initials LRW: LaReinaWilleke.
This is my story. It is not a nice story. If you don’t want to read it, then close this book, put it down and walk away!

August, 2012.

For reasons of privacy the names of persons involved have been changed. Of some only the initials are mentioned.

A part from my manuscript.

 

A part from my manuscript

My parents had started a guesthouse for Spanish migrant workers in the house.
On the first floor and in the attic lived the migrant workers.
Often my father cooked for everyone.
But they all also had their own cooking set with a butane gas bottle available.
At the time of the explosion and the fire there were 17 butane gas bottle in the attic.
My parents actually wanted to stop with the guesthouse and were also busy with moving to the Meubelstreet number 9 in Rotterdam.
But that house wasn’t prepared yet.
One of the Spanish migrant workers, Juan, then had smashed the head of a butane gas bottle in the attic, after which the entire attic exploded.
Thereby the roof was lifted from the house.
The roof flew past the living room window downwards.
At the time of the fire me and my eldest sister Els were at home .
My sister Jo was locked in for punishment in the rearmost attic room.
And there was also yet a babysitter in the room..
That was the girl next door  named Connie.
I lay on the couch and my eldest sister was watching television.
The sitter stood in front of the window.
I lay on my belly with my head in my hands.
I stared outside and suddenly heard a terrible bang, and subsequently saw a large part of our roof falling burning past the window downwards.
Immediately there was panic and Els started screaming.
The sitter, who also stood in front of the window, also started screaming.
I ran to the window to see what was going on.
Els also ran to the window.
When we realized, that there was an explosion and a fire, we ran to the stairs to go downstairs.
Connie grabbed my youngest little sister who stood in the cot.
The fire was burning above our heads.
I was last on the stairs.
We were on the second floor, so the flames were just above us.
I was halfway the staircase, when I thought of my sister Jo.
I ran upstairs again and I pulled open the door of the attic and the heat approached me.
I went up and have taken my sister from the rearmost attic room.
The other side of the attic was ablaze and everything was boiling hot.
There all the butane gas bottles were stored,
When we ran downstairs a beam from the attic fell down right past us.
My hair was partly singed off, but that of my sister fortunately not so much.
We arrived downstairs and there we were helped further by the firemen.
In the ambulance we sat watching at our house what burned down.
At the moment of the fire my parents sat in the café Jalink at the North square in Rotterdam.
That wasn’t far away from the Rottestreet.

That day they had worked in our new house at the Meubelstreet and like every day they went to have a beer.
When they heard an enormous bang some guests of the  café walked outside.
Somebody said to my father: “Hey, according to me your house is in flames”.
To which my father said: “Ah take your mother for a fool”.
But he still walked outside to take a look and then he yelled at Bep: “That is our house….”
When they arrived at our house they couldn’t do nothing else but watch how all their possessions burned.
The house  and furniture were not insured.
That was the first time, that I saw Bep crying in the arms of a policeman.
After that I have never more seen her cry .
I remember that the whole street was filled with people.
I remember the fire trucks and firemen and the Spanish migrant worker, who had caused the gas-explosion and fire.
He was horribly burnt in his face and hands but was still alive.
The pieces of skin hung from his face.
All our stuff, except for some small things, lay there burning.