According to an explosive Dutch media report, a former Bellingcat researcher who led investigations into the MH17 disaster and child abuse turns out to have been a sex abuser of children \u2013 including his own daughter. He killed himself after being sentenced to prison.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A prominent former Bellingcat reporter committed suicide after being convicted for sexually abusing his daughter in March 2022, according to a new\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0by independent Dutch journalist Eric Van De Beek. Operating behind the pseudonym \u201cDaniel Romein,\u201d the researcher featured prominently in a number of investigations by the\u00a0Western government-funded<\/a>\u00a0\u2018open source\u2019 outfit, Bellingcat, including a years-long probe of online child sexual exploitation materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Romein\u2019s suicide was apparently motivated by his\u00a0March 2022 sentencing<\/a>\u00a0to 36 months in prison for sexual abuse. He was also barred from seeing his daughter, the subject of his abuse, for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ruling, released three years later due to pressure from independent Dutch outlet De Andere Kant, details Romein\u2019s shocking sexual assault and rape of his daughter while she was between the ages of 6 and 10, and reveals he was convicted of possession of child pornography \u201cover 15 years\u201d prior.\u00a0<\/p> In email correspondence with The Grayzone, Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins denied that Romein\u2019s\u00a0abrupt firing<\/a>\u00a0in December 2019 was related to his pedophilic past. He stated, \u201cGiven the timeline described in the judgment, Bellingcat\u00a0could not have been \u2013 and was not \u2013 aware of any allegations against him.\u00a0After all, the allegations were first made against Mr Romein in March\/April 2020, which was some time after Mr. Romein had left Bellingcat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While tacitly acknowledging that Romein was the target of the sexual abuse allegations, Higgins insisted, \u201cIt is not clear whether the [court] judgment is about Mr. Romein as it is anonymized.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked whether Bellingcat had been aware that Romein was convicted of possessing child pornography 15 years before his sentencing for sexually abusing his daughter, Higgins did not respond directly. \u201cThe complaints to the European Press Prize which resulted in the revocation of Mr. Romein\u2019s laureate status were about unacceptable online behavior of Mr. Romein,\u201d stated Higgins, referring to the withdrawal of a prestigious award to Romein in 2021. \u201cThese complaints were not linked to the allegations of sexual abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The European Press Prize\u00a0announced it was withdrawing the award it had given Romein in recognition of work he had done for Bellingcat geolocating images related to child abuse in Eastern Europe in light of\u00a0numerous<\/a>\u00a0\u201csubstantiated complaints\u2026 from different people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Higgins did not respond to requests for clarity on why Romein was suddenly terminated after five years of work with his organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Van De Beek said he also spoke to an acquaintance of Romein\u2019s, who knew him by his real name, Danyo Romijn: \u201cHe informed me about the court ruling. It was put online by the court after I had phoned them asking why the ruling wasn\u2019t published. The person who informed me about the ruling had given me the number of the ruling. This way the court was able to find the ruling and put it online after all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reporter continued, \u201cThe name of Danyo Romijn is not in the publication of the court ruling. But in the ruling the judge referred to a police report. The person who informed me about the conviction showed me the police report (which is of course not public). This police report concerns an interrogation of Danyo Romein about the allegations of his daughter. Danyo Romein\u2019s name and birth date are stated in the report. During the interrogation he mentions that he worked for Bellingcat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a lead contributor to Interpol\u2019s\u00a0Stop Child Abuse<\/a>\u00a0operation, Bellingcat\u2019s researchers were invited in mid-2017 to probe \u201cclues\u201d from the \u201cbackground of an image with sexually explicit material involving minors,\u201d such as curtains, furniture and clothing, which could \u201chelp crack a case.\u201d Multiple articles on the subject on\u00a0Bellingcat\u2019s website<\/a>\u00a02018 \u2013 2020 name Romein as a contributor, and occasionally even the lead author. In\u00a0April 2020<\/a>, Romein \u2013 along with Bellingcat\u2019s \u201cTimmi Allen,\u201d a former\u00a0Stasi operative<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 was shortlisted for the European Press Prize for this work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the Dutch court ruling shows, Romein jumped into this project just a few years after his own long-running rape of his daughter purportedly ended. The judgment states that between October 2011 and 2016, he committed a variety of horrifying sexual acts on his child, who was born in 2005.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an official report submitted to police, Romein\u2019s daughter recalled how often, his abuse began following her showering. He would then enter the bathroom, and start sexually assaulting her. She estimated the frequency with which this happened \u201cis more likely to be around 100 than 10 times.\u201d While Romein\u2019s defense argued his daughter\u2019s testimony was \u201cunreliable,\u201d and that he should be therefore \u201cacquitted in full,\u201d a letter he sent her years prior appeared to corroborate her account:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDear [name redacted], I am really sorry for the big mistakes I have made. I didn\u2019t realize at the time what consequences these mistakes could have for you, because everything was done with love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moreover, Romein openly admitted during his interrogations by police that such behavior towards children was from his perspective \u201cnormal in connection with the free upbringing he had enjoyed.\u201d The court found him guilty, sentencing him to five years in prison, while banning him from any or all contact with his daughter \u201cin any way, directly or indirectly\u201d during the same period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s unclear how much access to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) Bellingcat provided to Romein; images sent by Interpol appear to have been edited to remove such content. But the exercise appeared to have consumed a great deal of his energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2020, a yearly Bellingcat report on its CSAM investigations revealed that four of its researchers \u2014 including Romein, who was praised for his \u201cFantastic research and eye for detail and precision\u201d \u2014\u00a0collectively spent a whopping 2500 hours on the project, viewing a combined four million images in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shocking revelation that Bellingcat relied on a convicted pedophile to handle its investigations into child sexuality exploitation has effectively been buried by legacy media outlets, which frequently cited the organization to accuse designated enemy states of everything from chemical attacks to assassinations.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n A\u00a0glowing February 2023 obituary<\/a>\u00a0in the Dutch daily, De Volkskrant, claimed Romein died in his sleep from cardiac arrest the previous December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The effusively positive eulogy quoted a \u201cgood friend\u201d of Romein, a mainstream journalist named Robert van der Noordaa, claiming he played \u201ca key role\u201d in cracking the MH17 case, both by discovering the location from which the fatal missile had been fired, and \u201ctracking down the suspects who have since been convicted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In reality, despite having repeatedly posted photos on\u00a0social media<\/a>\u00a0of a supposed quartet of Russian and Ukrainian militants who struck MH17 with a BUK missile, The Hague\u2019s Joint Investigative Team\u00a0probe<\/a>\u00a0into the plane\u2019s downing\u00a0concluded<\/a>\u00a0in February 2023 \u201cnothing could be found that pointed to involvement on the part of these four persons\u201d in MH17\u2019s shootdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That same month, Romein apparently took his own life rather than enter prison as a convicted pedophile.<\/p>\n\n \n <\/div>\r\n According to an explosive Dutch media report, a former Bellingcat researcher who led investigations into the MH17 disaster and child abuse turns out to have been a sex abuser of children \u2013 including his own daughter. He killed himself after being sentenced to prison. A prominent former Bellingcat reporter committed suicide after being convicted for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":226471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12022],"tags":[2301,7860,1552,84636,84637,45098],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-226470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activist","tag-child","tag-conviction","tag-dies","tag-exbellingcat","tag-operative","tag-rape"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thegrayzone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/danyo2.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1\")
![](\"https:\/\/www.activistpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/David-Avocado-Wolfe-Logo.png\"\/){kind=logo}
<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.activistpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/image-12.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nEx-Bellingcat researcher claimed rape of children was \u2018normal\u2019<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"