A 31-year-old man was sentenced to 18 months in prison for raping a 14-year-old autistic girl in Velsen-Noord in 2022. The girl had made contact with someone she believed was a boy via Snapchat before he took her to an apartment, where he raped her for two hours. She reported the incident with her mother the following day, and the man was arrested nine months later. He confessed, but continued to appeal, extending the criminal proceedings to more than four years.

The Supreme Court declared his appeal inadmissible and did not review the case on its merits, leaving the sentence in place. After five months in pretrial detention, he still has about a year and a month of the sentence to serve. The girl’s mother, Diana, said the proceedings’ conclusion brought relief but also anger, and described confronting the man at court hearings as deeply distressing.