Speaker on sects and closed communities
Jan is a speaker who will have you hanging on his every word as a listener. He takes you into the world of cults and closed communities and tells how he himself escaped from them, went undercover and eventually joined the police.
When Jan is four, he gets a stepfather who is part of a movement with entirely unique views on health, education and parenting. When he rebels, Jan is dealt with in increasingly extreme ways, abused and stuffed with heavy medication. He has one place where he feels truly safe: the local police station, where he often sits silently for hours listening to the officers.
At 16, he is tucked away in a Belgian institution for mentally disabled people of 'the movement'. His mother is terminally ill and receives a highly controversial alternative cancer treatment. That's the limit. Jan runs away, lives on the streets, faces drugs and abuse and ends up in a psychiatric hospital. In his head, he can already hear them saying: 'You see...' That never. So he chooses the only other path left to him: fighting back nonviolently. With help and trust from sometimes unexpected quarters, wounds are healed. Step by step, he conquers his place within the police force. He wrote the book "Gekke Jantje" about his gripping life.
Jan has since become a specialist on cults and closed communities. Freed from an invisible stranglehold, he now uses his own experiences to help others. Making hidden worlds visible. Reaching people trapped behind walls and carefully constructed facades. Where money, power and sex are the vehicle. Jan is not only a key note speaker on this topic but also gives training courses. He also coaches victims, together with his partner Gerrie Bakker, in their coaching practice With New Eyes Looking. Jan lives with Gerrie and their children in Amerongen.
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