How the City of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts are investigating following a report of rape at the Jakop Ahlbom Company.
That protocols around social safety and serious cross-border behaviour are the answer to the problem involves as much arbitrariness as certainty. That is the picture that emerges from the investigations done into the allegation of rape of an intern at Jakop Ahlbom Company.
The intern states that an employee raped her during a tour of the company in 2023 while she was drunk. In his room, after she and the staff member had taken beer with the internship supervisor during the day and drank it in the evening. The supervisor, allegedly drunk himself, left them together in the room. The intern has no memory of what happened next, that night in the employee's room, but she woke up with semen between her legs. Out of shame and especially fear of not getting her internship and degree, she initially decided to remain silent. Until things didn't work out in the workplace.
Last year, we published an - anonymised - article about this case. This was followed up when Amsterdam's alderman for culture, Touria Meliani, made an appeal for people to report (serious) cross-border behaviour to her, or the municipality, as the case may be. She wanted, following the affair of serious transgressive behaviour by a celebrated director at the National Opera and the Opera's handling of it, know what similar cases were going on at arts organisations subsidised by the municipality.
Thereupon, a former internship supervisor, in consultation with the intern, made an integrity report about the Jakop Ahlbom Company to the Amsterdam municipality.
An investigation is launched upon such a report. In this case, that consisted of interview(s) with the Jakop Ahlbom Company by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK) , the company's main subsidiser. Although the word suggests that such an integrity investigation by the municipality is about integrity, it deals with protocols: did the company follow the right steps when reports are made?
So whether a rape did or did not take place is not investigated. Truth-telling is for the Public Prosecution Service, writes the Amsterdam municipality.
At the insistence of the municipality and the AFK, the company is also having an external investigation conducted by Verinorm, a research agency on social safety, crime and integrity. The SBB, the Stichting Beroepsonderwijs & Bedrijfsleven that oversees internship protocols, investigated a few months earlier whether the company was still a safe organisation for interns.
Truth finding
After several months, the council wrote: "Based on the investigation and discussions between the AFK, the municipality and the Jakop Ahlbom Company, we conclude that the institution acted appropriately, in line with their protocol.". Because no formal complaint has been filed, the Amsterdam municipality e-mails, substantive adversarial proceedings are not applicable to the integrity report.
When we inquired, however, the AFK came up with a number of conclusions that have little to do with research on social safety protocols; for example, they emailed that this reporter is a friend of the intern and that we did not follow the guidelines of the Journalism Council.
Journalistic directive
Friendship is neither relevant nor true: in reality, the intern and the reporter met only four months after the alleged rape. For the first time in both their lives. As for the journalism guidelines: based on an allegation by the company, that conclusion seems explainable, but it too is false.
The AFK admits in the email exchange that the conclusions of their investigation stem from one investigated source: the management of the Jakop Ahlbom Company, consisting of the business director, since this year incidentally business director of the Nederlands Dans Theater in The Hague, and artistic director Jakop Ahlbom, namesake of the company. The current business director was therefore not yet employed at the time of the affair.
WOO request: 6 weeks become 6 months
Substantiation of some informal and personal conclusions we did not get from the AFK. We therefore filed a WOO request with the municipality. Under the Open Government Act, government bodies have a legal duty to make a decision within 6 weeks on whether to provide the requested information yes or no. It ends up taking almost 6 months.
However, there is contact with the municipality in between. At one point, we hear that the documents are ready, but 80% of the text is blacked out. Even before a final decision is made by municipal lawyers, a telephone proposal comes from an official to see the requested documents directly through the company. This is conditional on the withdrawal of the WOO request. We explain that the threat of a libel and defamation suit by the Jakop Ahlbom Company's lawyer and the accused employee against us as well as against the intern is still current. Can the municipality mediate or give guarantees of transparency from the company (e.g. will we be allowed to see the full documents or the excised version)? The municipality does not.
We uphold the WOO request. Later, an official denies via email that this informal proposal to withdraw our WOO request was made, something that the very helpful information commissioner also denies when questioned at the municipality. However, we have a witness to the telephone conversation with the official. That the matter is sensitive in relation to the position of culture councillor Touria Meliani is confirmed by a source we speak to. The municipality reportedly fears employment liability.
Amsterdam municipality website: disclosure of all WOO requests submitted
Signals and 4 notifications
During the grant reviews for the new Arts Plan, in early 2024, the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts was not entirely sure about social safety at the Jakop Ahlbom Company. From the grant advice: "The company indicates that it considers the subject of social safety important and is affiliated to Stichting Sociale Veiligheid Podiumkunsten (Foundation for Social Safety in the Performing Arts), which can help in finding confidants. There is its own code of conduct for a safe and healthy working environment but because the committee has no insight into the main principles, it is difficult for it to assess whether this ensures social safety."
The AFK was already aware of the rape allegation at the time. The company's management waited months before reporting it to them. With the announcement of the publication of the first article, the AFK was notified in early 2024. A so-called signal investigation1 does not take place then, the interview report states. Not at the request of the AFK, not at the request of councillor Touria Meliani, nor from the company.
The company's 2023 annual report describes that 4 reports of unwanted and/or transgressive behaviour were received where in other years it was 0. The management tells the AFK that they spoke to all their staff about the intern issue and nothing came out of it to initiate such a signal investigation. However, the management does not speak to all employees.
Bit uncomfortable
One of our sources in the first article said that stories were circulating in the workplace about the 'sex night' and that the working atmosphere was strange. This employee was not heard by the company. The accused employee himself had told this colleague that things had 'not gone quite right' that night with the trainee.
That everyone in the company was aware in June 2023 is also evident from WhatsApp traffic with the production manager and the intern. She had already reported to the trustee by then. "It might be a little uncomfortable to carry on without saying anything as if nothing happened. I think it will be nice for you and the team if you explain why you were absent for a while. Then they will understand your side of the story. Now they only know the side of [the accused employee]".
This was exactly the struggle for the intern: everyone knew its story. It was for her far too uncomfortable with all her shame to face a group of people during the final party with her side of the story, she writes. Getting her diploma hangs over her head like a sword of Damocles, Whatsapps with school also reveal.
Shoot the messenger, blame the victim
In the only AFK interview report provided by the municipality, a number of things stand out, about protocol and also about non-protocol issues. The management does not provide the letters from the lawyer to the intern and us to the AFK for inspection because, they write, of too far-reaching personal information. It is remarkable that the AFK does not ask for inspection and relies purely on the company. That the directors do not release the lawyer's correspondence is understandable: together they chose an attack strategy: 'shoot the messenger, blame the victim'.
The company's lawyer also writes that the accused employee provided drugs to the intern on the night in question. This was entirely new information for the intern as she was already so drunk from all the beer in the evening that she does not remember the subsequent drugs.
In the protocol general ban on alcohol and drugs of the company stipulates that "moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages after work or during social moments is allowed, but no exception is made for drug use".
Nowhere in the reports does the violation of this social safety protocol come up. The accused staff member is even offered a permanent contract after all that happened, something that stings the intern immensely.
Called by name
In the AFK interview report, the company's management tells us that we sent them the draft article with all the names of employees involved in it. This is demonstrably false: no names were ever mentioned. Neither of individuals nor of organisations. At the lawyer's imperative request, we even changed things like region names in connection with possible traceability.
That this - and other things such as disqualifying us as journalists or involving supposed personal relationships - gives the AFK the impression that journalistic guidelines were not followed is a conclusion not based on facts and an allegation by the company. There is no trace of this in the official interview report, creating a remarkable discrepancy between the informal conclusions in the AFK's emails to us and the formal record by the AFK.
Threatening letters
The AFK is asking the company about the letters the lawyer sent as threats. The management claims that the lawyer only wrote a summons with libel and defamation lawsuits when the draft article appeared. That is not correct. In reality, it happened almost 2 months earlier, when the intern announced to the press to want go looking for. In other words, the justification of the legal threat against us and especially against young the intern, is based on demonstrable falsehood.
That we allegedly said we were representing the interests of the trainee is also not correct. The lawyer constantly asks for that confirmation from us which he does not get as this too is not the case. We went with the intern's friend in September 2023 at the request of Director Ahlbom as a listening ear. The friend was afraid of his own emotions. The company and the AFK then accused this reporter of concealing that he was already a journalist. At the time, however, the intern had no intention of making her story public. In fact, over three months later, the intern asked if we -as former journalists- wanted to write up her story because the company again failed to keep promises to her.
The company also tells AFK that initially they only sent a letter of summons to us. However, a quote from a letter from the lawyer: "my previous summons letters dated January and March 2024 on behalf of clients to both you and Ms [...]".
Naturally, framing part of a lawyer's job, but when 'alternative facts' - through the Jakop Ahlbom Company's failure to provide key documents, among other things - ensure that an investigation is presented as factual truth, it is also compromising for the municipality and the AFK, to say the least. By withholding correspondence, investigators only read what the company tells and wants to tell in conversation. One settles for it.
They chatted for a while
Apart from the municipality/AFK, the Foundation for Vocational Education and Business (SBB) will also investigate in May 2024. SBB is the organisation that draws up protocols and requirements for internship companies. For example, for the conditions internship supervisors must meet. Central question: For the Albeda College Theatre School in Rotterdam, from where the intern is doing an internship, is the company still a safe place for interns? SBB conducted research through a conversation - partly online - with the Jakop Ahlbom Company and Albeda College. The conversation's conclusion: "Everyone at school and at organisation, in my opinion, acted to the best of their knowledge".
However, the SBB asks not to followed social safety protocols. It crucially adopts wrong timelines, such as: when the intern went to report to the vice squad. Again, the company falsely claims: "Through legal assistance they did manage to keep names out of the article". The SBB relies on one source: the company.
Unsuitable
The SBB report repeatedly refers to the small age difference between the employee and the intern. However, this excuse strategy of the company does not apply to the designated internship supervisor. They do not mention that he was only a year older than the intern (the previous year, he himself did an internship with the company). Nor that he was a friend of the accused employee or that, like the employee, he had already received an official warning for undesirable behaviour. According to SBB protocols, internship supervisors must be professionals who have years of experience. They must be suitable as supervisors to train people. According to the protocols, interns should also be supernumerary, but she had an independent duty during the performances, without supervision. Which made her a cheap labour force.
The company promises SBB that from now on, if there is a slight age difference in a shift, it will do extra monitoring. How many years older workers have to be to no longer pose a risk of cross-border behaviour is not defined.
Nowhere does it also address the doubts the company itself expressed when booking the inn. In a conversation with the intern, the production manager had already expressed reservations about the tour crew: "If only that goes well with these 3 people". In the protocol, that would fall under prevention social safety.
As if nothing happened
In the Jakop Ahlbom Company's corporate culture, almost everyone is young and inexperienced, unqualified and male. Managers came fresh from school (internship), they were given responsibilities to which they were not equipped. For instance, the temporary company manager/production manager had not yet graduated. Embedding of social safety did not exist at the company and the school. No records of internship interviews were made by either organisation when there was already conflict, incident and reports to confidential advisor and internship coordinator/school psychologist in correspondence.
The question of the relationship of authority and dependency between company, employee and intern is not raised in the investigations. The telephone report to the confidential adviser, was not followed up with a face-to-face interview, something that is customary. Why the company's Supervisory Board decided not to 'scale up' remains unclear.
Victim blaming
That victim blaming takes place at company and school is also evident from the SBB report. The researcher writes on behalf of Albeda College: "Teacher met the student in question the other day, they chatted for a while. But it was no longer addressed by student and by teacher". And: "She knew the way but decided to take a different path herself".
When the intern was referred to the school psychologist by her placement coordinator after reporting the incident, she was advised: drink less alcohol. No one at school pointed out to the intern at the time how to submit that crucial 'formal' online complaint form. In fact, the intern did not know the formal way at the time.
Threat
A final example of the company withholding information: the intern's boyfriend has been coming to pick her up after performances as often as possible since that particular night in 2023. She no longer wants to ride in the car together with the staff member. The boyfriend allegedly threatened the staff member. The production manager calls the intern to tell her that her boyfriend will be banned from the theatre. Without questioning or cross-examining the company manager/director with the intern, or the friend, about what exactly is going on. Many on the shop floor knew about the 'sex night' c.q. conflict by then. And the artistic director who co-starred in the performance later indicated in the conversation with the intern that he knew about 'sex' and conflict.
For what reason the company will not engage with the friend is not made clear. The AFK does not address this either. The company says the intern's friend came to bring and pick her up. This is not correct. He only picked her up late at night and he was also not, as reported at the SBB, present on set and behind the scenes during the performances. However, as a professional, he did sometimes help with the 'break' after the performance. He had asked the staff member to have an STI test done. The staff member refused.
The friend almost immediately requests via WhatsApp from the production manager a meeting with both the accused employee and the management to be heard as the threat accusation weighs heavily on him. Both requests are not heeded by the company.
'I'm not cooperating'
More than a year later, the business director suddenly does promise a conversation with the friend. The AFK report says the conversation does not take place. But not why not. In fact, the business director refuses the conversation. When the friend tells him who he would like to have with him during that conversation, the intern's previous supervisor at another theatre organisation, unknown to them, the director mistakenly emails that he is not an internship supervisor for Albeda College. "Your proposal is not workable for me. I am therefore no longer cooperating with an interview and consider the date option cancelled". The intern, her friend and the well-accredited internship supervisor then decide to file an integrity report with the municipality.
Remarkably, when we sent the AFK the draft version of this article, they suddenly noted that the conversation with the friend "rejected on 17 September 2024". Not that, as the official report states, "did not take place". There is a significant difference between not taking place and turning down a call. For what reason this is omitted raises questions.
External research
The municipality and the AFK urged the company to ask Verinorm as an independent external party to investigate the case. On protocols followed and not the case in itself. Verinorm is known from investigations at International Theatre Amsterdam ITA, the Gymnastics Union or the FNV. Their investigations are blacklisted in the WOO by the municipality: only the protocols that are public are shown. So what information they got from the Jakop Ahlbom Company and the municipality is not made clear, but 3 things stand out in the note, as it is called. Verinorm's own disclaimer: "There are limitations to review because no interviews were conducted with affected individuals and this note has been prepared based on available and known information".
Verinorm does, it says, go along with the unsubstantiated assumption that the reporter is a representative of the intern. Whether Verinorm had access to the lawyer's letters and complete information, for instance, is not known due to roadblocks. Two words have been conspicuously omitted by the council: No Declaration.
Making a report is a formal complaint. When the trainee requested an interview with the management in September 2023 and, now with a degree in her pocket, she spoke with much more confidence about 'no consent' and rape, she also indicated that the accused employee had threatened her in the workplace every time she would pass on what had happened.
Only at the time of that conversation, more than 4 months after that night in 2023, did the Jakop Ahlbom Company offer her 3 formal options via emails, and protocols did follow. They offered mediation with the employee, filing a formal complaint, or filing a report. In the conversation, the intern herself had already indicated that she was considering going to the vice squad. They even offered help with the latter. It was now no longer possible for the company not to follow procedures. The company also promised in the email to ask staff about the issue and report back to her within two weeks. That promise is never kept, whereupon she decides to go to the vice squad.
He said, she said
There is a file, with file number, with the police. The reason why the intern has not yet pursued the report is twofold: the police informed her that they were almost certain the prosecution would not take up the case because she had no memory of the night in question due to drunkenness. Moreover, an investigation would take years. Then it becomes a classic story of he said, she said.
The psychologist, with whom the trainee went to therapy on the advice of her GP after being diagnosed with PTSD, advised her against pursuing the case in the state she was in at the time.
Six months later, a change in the law would arrive indicating that if you are drunk, you can never consent/consent to sex.
Wrong counters
What is the value of an integrity report if you only have the self-interested company as a source? What is a file with the vice police worth if it does not count as formal, or the intern did not fill in a correct online form at school? For what reason did the municipality and the AFK feel it was not worth taking the intern seriously in the early stages? Was the company's lobbying of the AFK, as mentioned in Ahlbom's annual report, a case of 'us knows us', in the cultural sector? Also in the light of the AFK's unreported and informal conclusions in the email traffic?
With studies that, based on falsehoods, framing, omission, lobbying and unsubstantiated assumptions, cannot be and were not fully representative studies. With agencies that exempt themselves from their own protocols and legal formalities, but allow themselves to boast of the formalities that an intern did not comply with.
Around the table
Professor integrity and social security of organisations at the University for Humanistics in Utrecht, Rob van Eijbergen, read along and says the following about the proceedings: "It is striking how everyone acted. The school clearly did not handle it properly and the company should have simply sat down with the trainee instead of sending a lawyer on it. The municipality's action on the WOO request is, of course, unprecedented: an official should never have asked to withdraw a WOO. In all these investigations, nobody thinks about the intern anymore; she is completely forgotten in this way. While that is what it is all about".
Leaving cultural sector
Bright spot in this matter: the Jakop Ahlbom Company has now put social safety high on its agenda, as has Albeda College, we heard from recent interns and internship supervisors.
For the intern in question, this came too late: she has since left her profession of theatre technology and the cultural sector.
Amsterdam municipality's response:
Transgressive behaviour in any form is not acceptable. Everyone has the right to a safe working environment where they feel protected and respected. 2024 calls for reporting incidents of transgressive behaviour at subsidised institutions to prevent such behaviour from continuing and to encourage a culture of openness. Institutions are responsible for complying with safety and welfare rules, and the municipality monitors their actions closely.
Jakop Ahlbom Company (JAC) informed the AFK on 13 February 2024 of an issue between an intern and a theatre technician and explained the steps subsequently taken by JAC. The municipality was also informed and met with the parties involved. Institutions themselves are responsible for following the legal rules on (social) safety and handling and aftercare. By law, institutions must ensure a safe working and learning environment, including proper reception and aftercare. The municipality monitors the institutions' conduct in this regard.
JAC commissioned its own external investigation, which looked at whether proper procedures had been followed. Verinorm concludes that the actions taken were adequate. In the case of possible criminal offences and privacy-sensitive information involved, the municipality does not investigate the facts itself. No charges were filed; the independent investigation carried out did not reveal any further risks or signals based on the steps taken. JAC has in the meantime taken steps to promote social safety, the article concludes.[/note]
Nuts
- Signal research
In organisations, rumours or gossip about cross-border behaviour may circulate that you as an employer cannot put your finger on. For fear of becoming a target of criticism or gossip, fearing for career prospects or job loss, employees do not dare to report topics such as cross-border behaviour directly. In such a situation, a signal or culture investigation can be a solution. This investigation provides a picture of the situation, culture and processes at the time of the experienced cross-border behaviour.
Source: The National Complaints Commission. ↩︎
