A man has been sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment, with an additional 15 years’ supervision, for the manslaughter of four-year-old Dean Verberckmoes in 2022. This is the maximum possible sentence for manslaughter. Dave De Kock will only be eligible to apply for parole after 25 years. The court in Ghent found no mitigating circumstances.
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30-year prison sentence for man who killed 4-year-old Dean
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Dean, from East Flanders, went missing while staying with De Kock and his girlfriend, Romy W. The couple were friends of Dean’s mother and often looked after Dean and his younger sister.
On the evening of Friday 14 January 2022, De Kock went out alone with the toddler. Investigators were able to largely reconstruct his movements using ANPR cameras, mobile phone data, CCTV footage and bank transactions. He drove around Flanders, crossed the border into the Netherlands and spent the night at various locations in Zeeland.
On 17 January, Dutch police found the boy’s body on Neeltje Jans, an island in Zeeland. De Kock had been arrested earlier that day. He gave various accounts throughout the investigation but ultimately admitted being responsible for Dean’s death. The post-mortem indicated that Dean had been subjected to severe violence, including to his head and abdomen.
Romy W was acquitted of abduction, the main charge against her. She was found guilty of possessing and distributing images of child sexual abuse. She took screenshots of a video depicting child abuse that she had found on De Kock’s phone and forwarded them to her own phone in order to confront him.
She has spent several years in pre-trial detention and was given no custodial sentence. The conditions of her release include undergoing treatment for alcohol addiction.
De Kock is “unpredictable, untrustworthy and dangerous” and has caused “immeasurable human suffering”, the presiding judge stated. “It is a tragedy that his mother and his loved ones will never see Dean grow up to become a man.”
In 2010, De Kock was convicted of inhuman treatment resulting in the death of two-year-old Miguel, the son of his new partner. He was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.