So where is God?  (30 x 40 cm  print)

From Destroyed collection orig. pastel on paper 1997

In 2019, the Dutch De Winter Commission presented its report on violence within the youth care system, entitled "Insufficiently Protected." This is a sickening euphemism. It should have been titled: "Not Protected at All. Not Even for a Second."

Motivation

The driving force behind publishing this archive of approximately 600 artworks (2019–2025) is simple: when a state shows utter contempt for citizens who paid with everything they had—losing their parents, children, family, home, childhood, identity, safety, and their future—making that trauma visible becomes an act of absolute necessity. If for decades  the government institutions respond to the complex  consequences of state care with open hostility, victim blaming, DARVO techniques [1], Nazi methods and language, and identity norms imposed by violence, the state only behaves as the ultimate enemy.

In an act of extreme gaslighting, the Dutch state honored the foster mother who severely abused the children in her care and me  with a gold medal in the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1995. [2]  Conversely, the official complaint filed by my  brother and me against the foster parents  one year later was deliberately dismissed by the Public Prosecutor (by a sepot 41). True reparative justice remains absent, even though the government historically spent vast amounts of resources funding the destruction of children entrusted to the state.[3] 

Recognition and Apologies

The autobiographical urgency of this collection and the reality of the underlying trauma are formally recognized by independent official bodies, including the Schadefonds Geweldsmisdrijven (which categorized the case within the highest severity level for victims of violence), alongside official, personal apologies from Dutch state care organizations  Pleegzorg Nederland and the Raad voor de Kinderbescherming. This recognition however is an empty shell if you are excluded from all diversity and inclusion organizations because of a diverse identity, and rejected by mental health care for almost all you life because the consequences are 'far too complex'. 

Autobiography

This visual archive coexists alongside the autobiographical books Gepleegd and Hoe word ik Tim?, authored in Dutch under the pseudonym Jasper Heijting. These volumes contain the official apologies and describe Jimmy's fragmented childhood, as well as his later experiences and parts of his creative journey. The first chapter of Gepleegd is available in English. 

The fragmentation of childhood survival detailed in these books remains an active, living reality in the creation of our work.  Jimmy works alongside co-identities Tim, Alex, Sven, and Rainbow Remi is visible in various collaborative projects. Every piece of work of Tim, Alex, Rainbow Remi and Sven is  a victory over the system that once tried to erase Jimmy 's creativity.

The origin: The French Netherlands & The Realm of Boys

Jimmy’s history within the Dutch youth care system is an epic of absolute survival. Born in early 1962 in Apeldoorn, he was separated from his mother in the autumn of 1964 and placed into a cold institutional world where he survived through peer-oriented attachment. At age four, he was abruptly removed from his toddler group and placed with a foster family. The following thirteen years (1966–1979) were spent in a state-sanctioned foster environment engineered around military discipline and fundamentalist religious suppression. The explicit goal was to permanently alter his gender, identity, and origin through extreme and systematic violence and dehumanization.

THEY FAILED.

During his primary school years, Jimmy claimed absolute sovereignty over his own mind. Confined to darkness for many weeks at a time, he survived by turning to beautiful, colorful hallucinations inspired by a single fraction of light that reached his eyes. He fragmented into self-created worlds, reigning as King of his imaginary island, The French Netherlands, which was constantly beset by enemies and natural disasters.

Guided by his imagination and the profound companionship of his stuffed animals—the cat Bimbam, the small horse Pietertje, and the pink elephant Dombo—he outlasted systematic gender based torture. Jimmy endured this hostile environment by mentally retreating to the safety of his original toddler group. In his mind, he created The Realm of Boys: an imaginary world where only little boys lived and ruled. At age seventeen, he broke free from his foster parents, surviving his final years in the system abandoned on the streets and in forests. In 1981, Jimmy left state care without qualifications or support—carrying permanent physical and psychological injuries, but carrying something much greater: his freedom, used to rebuild his identity from  the ruins of the past. 

Notes

[1 ]DARVO is an acronym for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. It is a technique often used by perpetrators of violence or manipulators to evade responsibility, protect financial risks, and shift the blame onto the actual victim.

[2] Digibron Goud, Woudenberg 14-09-1995 Reformatorisch Dagblad
[3] The Foster Care Business Model: State-Funded Exploitation and Forced Labor (Case Study: 1966–1979)

Content Warning

This archive contains raw and  heavy depictions of institutional violence and trauma, that some people may find disturbing.

archive #1      Institutional violence,youth/  foster care  1-45

archive #2     Institutional violence, foster care  46-98

archive #3     Police violence and article 3 ECHR [1986]  99-120 

 archive #4    Institutional violence, youth/ foster care 121-162

 archive #5    Trauma Art and the Body   163-185

 archive #6    Institutional violence, youth and foster care  186-232

 archive #7    Institutional violence in foster care: gender based violence  233-280

archive #8    Institutional betrayal and violence in foster care 281-325

archive #9    Trauma art about youth care and violence in foster care 326-377

archive #10  Trauma art about violence in foster care378-428

archive #11  Trauma art 1992-1997   (Portraits, cult?/  Residential) 429-486

archive #12  (Project) Photographs and artwork: "Stigma by Design: The Enduring Pulse of the State 487-538

archive #13  Trauma art on institutional violence 541- 617

Related pages (artwork on trauma & identity):

Tim draws back   Work from Tim  about peer - only/ peer- oriented attachment in a children's home 

Soft queer rebels      portraits about queer identity in childhood, from the identity restoration studio (2021-2023)

They are everywhere but nobody knows who they are about marginalized, erased and voiceless identities by Tim and Alex

PUBLISHED  ZINES

Published books under the pseudonym

'Jasper Heijting'

Gepleegd   [English: Committed]  Gepleegd, published by  Tobi Vroegh Amsterdam

Editors: Ilona Barsony, Claire Hülsenbeck, Anouk de Jong, Rohan Karbet 

Executive Summary for Academics, Jurists, and Curators:
Gepleegd ("Committed") is a harrowing, autobiographical ego-document that exposes the catastrophic reality of state-sanctioned foster care abuse and institutional violence under the Dutch youth care system (jeugdzorg). Written with acute psychological precision, the book documents the systematic dehumanization of a child and the profound fragmentation of the human psyche as a survival mechanism against absolute terror.

Language: Dutch

Available in the libraries of the Netherlands and Flanders and bookstores.

2020  EAN   9789078761785

Read the first chapter of this book  in English

Hoe word ik Tim?  [English: How do I become Tim?]     

Executive Summary for Academics, Jurists, and Curators:
Hoe word ik Tim? ("How Do I Become Tim?") is the critical second volume of Jasper Heijting’s ego-documentary series. It traces the lifelong, agonizing aftermath of state-sanctioned childhood torture and details the psychological phenomenon of a fragmented inner world (also labeled as Dissociative Identity Disorder). Most importantly, this volume documents the exact historical turning point where the author begins to use raw visual art (art brut) as his sole mechanism for survival when all societal, medical, and legal institutions utterly fail him.

Language: Dutch. Image cover: Jo Coort

Available in the library of Flanders and bookstores.

2021   EAN  9789464068153