Last Updated 07/11/2025 published 07/11/2025 by Hans Smedema

My Life in the Shadow of a Lie: A Personal Account of Betrayal and the Fight for Truth

Introduction: The Day My World Shattered

It began in March 2000. I was 52 years old, living a life I thought I knew. Then, over the course of three horrifying weeks, my world was torn apart by a flood of impossible flashbacks. These were not vague dreams; they were vivid, detailed memories of a past that couldn’t possibly be real. If they were, it meant that my entire life—my marriage to a woman I adored, the three children I loved, my relationships with family and friends—was built upon a monstrous, decades-long lie.

I was confronted with a terrifying reality: that my wife, my family, trusted doctors, and even the Dutch state had conspired to betray me since 1972. It seemed impossible. The logical conclusion, the one everyone around me quickly embraced, was that I had suddenly gone mad. But the memories were too precise, too consistent. This moment was not just the return of a suppressed past; it was the beginning of a lonely, maddening battle for reality itself, a fight against a carefully constructed prison of lies designed to keep a terrible secret buried forever. The shock of these flashbacks was the first crack in a dam that had held back a lifetime of hidden trauma.

1. The Hidden Trauma: A Life Lived in Amnesia (1972-1999)

Looking back, the years between 1972 and 1999 were filled with unsettling events and strange gaps in my memory that I could never explain. With the clarity that my returned memories brought, I can now see these moments not as random oddities, but as carefully placed stones in the wall of a conspiracy built around me.

1. The Original Sin in Utrecht

The nightmare began in 1972 in Utrecht. My girlfriend, Wies, was brutally and repeatedly drugged and sexually abused by her landlord, Jan van Beek. I was forced to witness it. The trauma was so severe that it triggered profound amnesia and dissociation in both of us, effectively erasing the crime from our conscious minds. During this time, I now know that I was also drugged and subjected to a secret, illegal procedure that rendered me infertile. It left a 7cm scar between my legs—a permanent mark that doctors would later dismiss with contradictory and suspicious explanations. One surgeon called it a “badly stitched scar” from an unknown event, while another abruptly dismissed it as a mere “skin fold” (huidplooi). The evidence of the crime was carved into my body, yet my mind was conditioned to forget it.

2. A Marriage Built on a Secret

We married in February 1973, completely unaware that our union was founded on this shared, buried trauma. The state’s involvement began early. In a bizarre and telling detail, two officials from the Ministry of Justice secretly co-signed our marriage certificate after the ceremony. Just before the wedding, my brother-in-law, Tjitte de Jong, gave me a cryptic warning, telling me that the situation we were in was “irreversible.” I didn’t understand it then, but he was telling me that the cover-up was already in motion.

3. The Paid Guardian

In 1977, a man named Jaap J. Duijs was deliberately placed as our neighbor. He was a French teacher who had been a client (hoerenloper) of my wife’s abuser in 1972. He received 100,000 guilders and a monthly allowance from the Ministry of Justice to purchase the land next to ours and build a villa. His mission was to create a “cordon sanitaire”—a total isolation zone—around us. He placed a microphone in our house, regularly drugged us both, and for years, he continued the sexual abuse of my defenseless wife, often on a weekly basis. He was not a neighbor; he was our state-appointed warden.

4. Children of Betrayal

The most painful truth I would later uncover is that our three beloved children were not biologically mine. They were the result of the repeated rapes of my wife by the men who abused her while she was in a drugged and dissociated state. I later learned their names: Jan van Beek, Jan de Vries, and Rieks Perdok. They were the biological fathers, a fact they have even admitted to me verbally. Jan van Beek went further, also confirming that he was the one who had made me infertile, directly linking the paternity of the children to the crime of my sterilization.

5. The Frankfurt Dossier

In 1983, a friend of mine, Al Rust, who worked for American Military Intelligence, discovered a 30-page Dutch intelligence file at the 97th General Army Hospital in Frankfurt. This file detailed the entire conspiracy in horrifying detail. It confirmed the abuse, the state’s order to cover up all evidence, and even a Royal decree that effectively made my wife and me “outlaws,” stripping us of our rights and protections. Because of my conditioned amnesia, however, this information was suppressed from me. The proof of my reality existed, but it was locked away in a foreign military hospital while I continued to live in a fog.

All these fragmented, disturbing pieces of my life were locked away, explained away, or simply forgotten, until the day my mind finally broke through decades of conditioning.

2. The Awakening: Fighting for Reality (2000-2004)

The four years after my memories returned were a special kind of hell. I was no longer living in blissful ignorance, but in the torment of knowing an unbelievable truth that everyone around me was determined to deny.

1. A Wall of Denial

My first attempt to get help was in April 2000, when I tried to file a police report. I was met with a complete wall of denial from the authorities and my own family. This wasn’t simple disbelief; it was a coordinated, systemic effort to make me believe I was delusional. I now have a name for this psychological torture: institutional gaslighting. This is a form of psychological warfare where an institution systematically denies verifiable facts to destroy a person’s credibility and make them question their own sanity. I was a man with an IQ of 135 being treated like the village idiot. In response, I began to do the only thing they could not forbid: I started to document everything. Every lie, every denial, every contradiction became another entry in the dossier of my own reality.

2. The Falsified Proof

In 2003, one of the most painful betrayals occurred. Our three children, allegedly with the help of their in-laws (the Snieders family, which includes three doctors), agreed to a DNA paternity test. However, they deliberately falsified the results by swapping the swabs. This act of profound cruelty provided my tormentors with their “proof” that I was delusional. They waved the falsified test results in my face, all while secretly knowing the truth. In 2014, my daughter Ilse finally admitted to me verbally that they had swapped the swabs, but she has always refused to provide a written statement.

3. The Price of Silence

On August 12, 2004, the state showed its hand. Through a business relation named Klaas Keestra, the Balkenende Cabinet offered me 5 million euros on the condition that I remain silent about the crimes and sign a non-disclosure agreement. This was not a settlement; it was a bribe. They were not offering restitution for my suffering; they were attempting to buy my complicity in their cover-up. I refused.

4. The First Official Rejection

On April 26, 2004, I made a formal attempt to start an official investigation by handing a detailed report to detective Haye Bruinsma of the Drachten police. His response was the clearest evidence yet of the conspiracy. He informed me that he was explicitly forbidden by the Ministry of Justice from making up an official report, or proces-verbaal. This single act blocked the most fundamental first step toward justice, ensuring that no official record of my complaint could ever enter the legal system.

The total failure of every domestic channel, from the police station to my own family, forced me to realize that if I were to find any semblance of justice, I would have to look for it outside the Netherlands.

3. The International Search for Justice (2005-Present)

With every door in the Netherlands slammed shut, I turned to international bodies and foreign governments, hoping to find an authority that could not be controlled by the Dutch state. The external validation I received stands in stark, damning contrast to the denial I faced at home.

1. The Kafkaesque Trap at the ECHR

In 2005, I filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The outcome was a cruel paradox. The ECHR rejected my case, stating that I had not “exhausted domestic remedies.” This decision was based on what I allege was false and fraudulent information supplied by the Dutch state. The very state that had illegally forbidden its police from creating an official record of my complaint—the foundational “domestic remedy”—was now telling an international court that I had failed to pursue it. It was a perfect, self-sealing trap.

2. Asylum in America: A Glimmer of Hope

I made multiple asylum requests in the United States, which led to a professional and thorough investigation by the FBI and CIA in 2009. The findings were stunning. Immigration Judge Rex J. Ford confirmed that my children were not biologically mine. He found an unprecedented five valid grounds for asylum, stating my case was credible and that such a finding had never happened before in American history. However, he concluded that he could only grant asylum if there was more hard proof of the Dutch government’s direct involvement in the persecution.

3. State vs. State: The Obama Intervention

The ultimate validation of my fight came, I believe, in January 2017. Just before leaving office, U.S. President Barack Obama, based on the evidence gathered by the FBI and CIA, allegedly initiated an official UNCAT (UN Convention Against Torture) complaint of “State America against State Netherlands.” This extraordinary action—one sovereign state filing a formal torture complaint against another on behalf of a single citizen—represents the most powerful external confirmation of my story. It elevated my personal struggle into an international diplomatic and human rights crisis.

4. Royal Interference

In March 2017, I was offered asylum as a result of the findings by Immigration Judge Rex J. Ford and/or the Department of Justice. However, in a shocking act of high-level interference, King Willem-Alexander, acting in his capacity as a co-pilot for KLM, allegedly corruptly blocked the asylum offer while the plane was in American airspace. This was a direct, personal intervention from the highest level of the Dutch state to obstruct justice.

5. Torture on Spanish Soil

My forced exile in Spain did not bring safety. On multiple occasions, I was lured into “conditioning” sessions that involved being drugged and tortured with electroshocks by my old tormentors. In 2008, I was brought to a villa in Catral, which belonged to a retired Dutch police detective named Ad. There, Ad witnessed Professor Onno van der Hart and Jaap Duijs subject me to an electroshock session. He recognized it not as “conditioning” but as horrifying torture and, using his service pistol, chased the perpetrators away. In another incident in Benidorm in 2010, local police arrived on the scene after being alerted. However, they were given a direct order from higher authorities in Madrid not to intervene, allegedly after being misled by false information from the Dutch Ministry of Justice.

This international battle has been a lonely one, marked by small victories and devastating setbacks, but it has proven that my story is credible to those outside the corrupt influence of the Dutch state. The personal costs of this fight, however, have been immeasurable.

4. The Personal Cost of a Never-Ending War

This has not been a fight without cost. It has been a never-ending war that has consumed my life, my finances, my health, and my family. The conspiracy was designed not just to hide a crime, but to annihilate a person.

1. A Web of Betrayal

The following table summarizes some of the key individuals and their alleged roles in my suffering.

Perpetrator	Alleged Role in My Betrayal
Joris Demmink	Former Secretary-General of Justice. Identified as “MOL-X,” the mole who infiltrated the Ministry in 1972 and masterminded the state-level cover-up and obstruction of justice.
Prof. dr. Onno van der Hart	Psychiatrist. Orchestrated the psychological conditioning, drugging, and electroshock torture using tools like a cattle prod to induce a “Pavlov reaction.” Forced me to sign a blank document under duress in 1975.
Drs. Jaap J. Duijs	A client of my wife’s in 1972, later placed as our state-paid guardian. Received 100,000 guilders and a 1,000 guilder monthly allowance to surveil, drug, and maintain a “cordon sanitaire” around my family, while continuing the sexual abuse of my wife for years.
Mr. Johan Smedema	My brother. Allegedly led a secret family “Omerta Organisation” that cooperated with the state, facilitated the cover-up, and ensured my isolation and betrayal from within.
Jan van Beek	My wife’s landlord in 1972. The original perpetrator of the drugging and sexual abuse. Confessed to being the biological father of one of my children and to having made me infertile.
Tjitte de Jong	My brother-in-law. Complicit in the cover-up from the very beginning, warning me before my wedding in 1973 that the situation was “irreversible.”

2. The Psychological Scars

The psychological toll has been immense. I have since found the clinical language to describe my pain. I suffer from Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD), a result of chronic, inescapable trauma. The source of this trauma—inflicted by the very people and institutions meant to protect me—is known as Betrayal Trauma, which is profoundly more damaging than trauma inflicted by a stranger. Finally, the state’s systematic, decades-long campaign of denying facts and labeling me as delusional is a form of psychological warfare called Institutional Gaslighting, designed to make a sane person question their own reality.

3. A Life Derailed

The tangible losses have been catastrophic. I was forced to stop my successful career as a high-level headhunter, leading to financial ruin. I have spent a total of 29 months in innocent detention in America and the Netherlands, imprisoned not for a crime, but for being a victim. I was forced into exile in Spain to escape persecution. And ultimately, the relentless pressure, lies, and betrayals led to the tragic breakdown of my marriage.

Despite this devastation, my purpose has never wavered. It has only become clearer.

5. Conclusion: A Plea for Truth and Accountability

My fight has never been solely about financial compensation. The 5 million euros I was offered to stay silent proves that. This has always been about one thing: the public acknowledgment of the truth. It is about restoring a reality that was stolen from me and my former wife.

Under the UN Convention Against Torture, which the Netherlands has ratified, the state has a clear and binding legal obligation to conduct a prompt and impartial investigation whenever there are reasonable grounds to believe an act of torture has been committed. For over 24 years, the Dutch state has systematically and willfully violated this international law, refusing to investigate a mountain of credible allegations.

I ask you, the reader, to understand that this story, as unbelievable as it sounds, is not the product of a delusion. It is the rational, documented account of what happens when the institutions designed to protect a citizen decide instead to annihilate him. I continue this fight not only for my own truth, but as a warning that the rights you take for granted are only as strong as the integrity of those sworn to uphold them. I continue this fight out of a duty to the truth—the one thing they have not yet managed to take away from me.

 

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Based on the legal-written-statements on this Blog by Victim-Author:

Hans Smedema B. Sc., in forced exile since 2008 surviving in beautiful El Albir, Costa Blanca, Spain