The number of victims in the Amsterdam childminder abuse case may have to be revised to more than 50, Amsterdam mayor Eberhard van der Laan said on Monday night.

Although initial estimates said between 30 and 50, Roberts Mikelsons himself has named 53 children. ‘And I fear that we will have to increase the total,’ Van der Laan told tv show Nieuwsuur.

Global network

Police now think he and his partner Richard van Olffen are part of a worldwide paedophile network and the driving force behind a website boyhoodmagazine.org. They used the website to attract paedophiles to encrypted channels to exchange child pornography. Van Olffen was the registered owner of the site, the Telegraaf says.
Mikelsons is a master encryptor and has also built websites for a variety of small firms, including an Amsterdam driving school, the paper says.

Miffy
The investigation was triggered by the arrest of a paedophile from near Boston in the US. According to the Telegraaf, among the thousands of photographs found in his possession was one featuring a very young child and a toy rabbit known as Miffy (Nijntje) which led detectives to think the children could be Dutch.
The photo was shown earlier this month on a Dutch tv crime show and recognised. Mikelsons was arrested later that evening.
Van der Laan also said the Amsterdam police force’s cold case team is to look again at a complaint against Mikelsons made in 2008. The complaint was looked at but not formally investigated.

Parents
Some 500 worried parents packed in to Monday night’s information session, the Telegraaf reports. Not all the parents had direct reason to worry but many had children who had been cared for by Mikelsons.
Over 750 have telephoned a special information number.
Mikelsons worked at two city childcare centres between February 2007 and January 2010 and advertised his services as a babysitter. According to the Telegraaf he did not have a criminal record but did have an official certificate of good behaviour, known as a VOG.
According to the AD, Mikelsons and his partner had been recently turned down for adoption. A spokesman for the child protection council which rejected their application declined to say on what grounds they had been refused.
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Creche abuse: ‘police ignored earlier complaint’
Babysitter abused up to 50 young children in Amsterdam