The Kitui based wife of a Dutch national facing defilement charges in court says she was shocked to learn that her husband had been jailed in the Netherlands with the same offenses of sexually molesting underage girls.
Rachel Hans, the Kenyan wife of Hans Vriens Egon Dieter, the Dutch national accused of defiling three minors in Nairobi says the allegations and subsequent court case have hugely disrupted their humble lives and the charity work of taking care of street children.
Mrs Hans narrated said he met the 65-year-old man in 2010 while staying at Githurai area in Nairobi and they dated for two years before agreeing to marry him. She recalls that at that age she only wanted to settle down with him and live a quiet life.
She paraded eight girls from different communities staying at their home as beneficiaries of their charity work, saying she has enrolled them in local primary schools.
“I knew Hans must have had a family back in his motherland and he had told me as much but I didn’t imagine he could be linked to such offences as I’ve never seen him behave suspiciously,” she said.
Rachel was visiting family friends in Malindi when the sex abuse claims first emerged in November 2018 while husband was in Nairobi, where he stays most of the time.
“I was called from Netherlands by one of his sisters who wanted to know what was happening. Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen the news on TV and nobody had told me about it. I was shocked by the charges and I’ve been struggling to know the truth because he still pleads his innocence,” Rachel explained.
In the subsequent days, before Hans was arraigned in court, detectives from Directorate of Criminal Investigations raided their Kitui home and ransacked every room, looking for the children who were staying with the couple.
She doesn’t regret marrying the white man who promised to take care of her despite the age difference but she’s frustrated by the turn of events and deeply embarassed by the negative publicity the court case has attracted.
“Marriage is for better or worse. Here is a foreigner whom I’ve stayed with for 10 years now facing grave charges. The entire country including my home village may be against him but I’ve no choice other than to stick with him,” she said in resignation.
Rachel says she can’t confirm or deny the child abuse charges both in Kenya and the Netherlands but describes Mr Hans is a humble man who may have been a victim of blackmail by women out to extort him.
“I don’t know what happened to him before he came to Kenya because I’ve never visited the Netherlands since we got married but at his age he’s less active sexually and incapable of engaging in such escapades,” she said.
The mother of one, a girl aged seven years is at crossroads, but she has vowed to continue taking care of the children from poor backgrounds.