Bodegraven in the Netherlands is at the center of a conspiracy myth about a network of pedophile satanists. The place defends itself, complains, wins – and in the end it can only lose. A story about what lies do once they are in the world.
Of
Thomas Kirchner, Bodegraven-Reeuwijk
In its “green heart” the Dutch cliché is right: a pan-flat landscape with meadows, cows, sheep, lakes, canals – and windmills. In the middle of this heart, 20 minutes by bus from the cheese city of Gouda, lies Bodegraven. Almost 20,000 people live in the town on the Old Rhine. The Romans were already here, the French plundered the small town in 1672. Today, mostly well-to-do people live here, who can be seen sitting through the windows in their brick single-family houses in the evenings.