Sietske Hoekstra, 25, took a maternity leave from her job
with her dentist employer, Gerrit Ike from Beesterzwaag, Netherlands, in March
2010. When Hoekstra, who was residing with her sister in Nij Beets, returned to
work she notified her boss of the sad news that the child had miscarried. This
was the third time this happened and this time Dr. Ike was deeply suspicious
and reported his employee to the police. She was pregnant when she joined the
dentist office in 2006 as an intern. When Dr. Ike mentioned her pregancy she
denied it. He found it strange but let it drop. After she was hired on in 2008
she again became pregnant at the end of the year. Later in this term of pregnancy
in the summer of 2009 she claimed she was acting as surrogate mother. Dr. Ike
found this plausible because, as he later said, “it suited her character.” Yet
with some people she simply denied being pregnant despite her visible maternity
belly. She acted offended at the suggestion.
Following the tip-off police began an investigation. When
asked about the pregnancies Sieske concocted a new yet easily disprovable
fabrication. She claimed she had put the babies up for adoption. When, after
stalling for months, she failed to provide documentation to support her claim
she was finally arrested, Wednesday August 10. She confessed she had
suffocated each of four (one had been born in 2003) newborn babies who were
born alive and stored their tiny corpses in the attic. It was proposed during
the April 2011 trial that two of the babies were stillborn despite the woman’s
confession that she had smothered them all. In two of the cases Sietske had
never bothered to buy any baby provisions.
On October 11, 2012 her appeal hearing Ms. Hoekstra’s
sentence, delivered in 2011, was reduced to 3 years in prison.
***
[David Haakman, “3 jaar cel
en tbs voor Sietske H. voor babymoorden, nrc.nl, Oct.
11, 2012]
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