Dutch male broadcaster tells of rape but will not name his attacker

Dutch writer and broadcaster Jelle Brandt Corstius has said he was raped when he just starting out in television. His story comes in the wake of the #Metoo Twitter campaign in which (mostly) women denounce sexual abuse in the workplace.

Brandt Corstius says he wrote an article about the alleged abuse but quickly realised he could not publish it: ‘It is his word against mine,’ he says in Tuesday’s Trouw.

‘At the very start of my career in television I was drugged and forced to perform oral sex, which is rape. When he wanted rape me anally as well survivor’s instinct kicked in and I ran out,’ Brand Corstius writes.

Brand Corstius said he decided not to name his attacker because ‘there are no witnesses and chances are that he will sue and I will have to take out a second mortgage on my house to pay the damages.’

The writer said he had gone public with his story to try to lower the threshold for reporting attacks and to encourage people in positions of responsibility, such as HR managers, to take reports seriously.