My name is a single 'Jimmy Groen', but in my life and work I am not alone. I am a group of toddlers and two boys. My art is the language of these children, who are stuck in a time when they were deliberately broken by the systems that should have protected them.

In 1993, everything changed. The murder of British toddler James Bulger acted as a lightning rod for my own deeply suppressed traumas. It was the moment the images could no longer stay inside; a definitive turning point. The injustice done to him gave a face to the invisible violence I experienced in Dutch children's homes and foster families.

My history is one of systematic destruction in foster care lasting nearly 14 years. After losing my mother at the age of three, I was placed in an  institution where 'peer-oriented attachment'  became my only blueprint for survival., before being placed in a specially selected foster family. The government has now officially acknowledged that I was deliberately destroyed during my seventeen years in the youth care system.

I was never allowed to simply be a boy. I was threatened with mutilation, all boyish behavior was strictly prohibited, and I was forced into complex gender confusion, treated only as a girl. I was even forced to kill animals because I was told I 'wasn't boy enough'. 

This hatred against boys was fueled by a youth care organization that was fully aware of the systematic torture I endured—torture that led to lasting physical injuries. Yet, they kept me in that foster home, even after my brothers fled to escape the severe abuse. We suffered through prolonged periods in total darkness, experiencing systematic violence, extreme hatred, and dehumanization. During my final months in foster care, I was kept as 'their animal' on the floor, simply because I insisted on carrying my biological parents' name.

In a cruel irony, the foster mother who systematically abused us was decorated by the state in 1995 with a gold medal in the Order of Orange-Nassau. Meanwhile, my official criminal complaint against the foster parents  and the youth care organization in 1996 was dismissed by the Public Prosecutor as a 'sepot 41'—deeming the case 'too insignificant' to investigate. My art and my books are the only places where the truth of this 'insignificant' life is allowed to exist

My oeuvre, consisting of a trauma archive of 600 works and another 600-700 works archived by the Royal Library (KB), serves as a visual dossier. Under the pseudonym Jasper Heijting, I have also recorded this history in books, detailing the systematic destruction encouraged by youth care organizations. As I was denied access to mental health care or LGBT support for most of my life, my art remains my only testimony to the complex aftermath of isolation, pain, and lost identity. 

The visual archive of my work is inextricably linked to my literary output published under the pseudonym Jasper Heijting. While my art captures the fragmented emotions and the inner 'group' of children, my books provide the detailed, chronological testimony of this systematic destruction. They serve as a written record of the events that the authorities chose to ignore—a narrative of survival against a backdrop of institutional betrayal. Together, the art and the books form a singular 'Trauma Art Archive,' ensuring that this history, which was once dismissed by the state as 'too small,' is preserved for eternity as a monument of truth and resistance.