Ex-Bellingcat operative dies after child rape conviction

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 – including his own daughter. He killed himself after being sentenced to prison.

A prominent former Bellingcat reporter committed suicide after being convicted for sexually abusing his daughter in March 2022, according to a new report by independent Dutch journalist Eric Van De Beek. Operating behind the pseudonym “Daniel Romein,” the researcher featured prominently in a number of investigations by the Western government-funded ‘open source’ outfit, Bellingcat, including a years-long probe of online child sexual exploitation materials.

Romein’s suicide was apparently motivated by his March 2022 sentencing to 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.

The ruling, released three years later due to pressure from independent Dutch outlet De Andere Kant, details Romein’s 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 “over 15 years” prior. 

In email correspondence with The Grayzone, Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins denied that Romein’s abrupt firing in December 2019 was related to his pedophilic past. He stated, “Given the timeline described in the judgment, Bellingcat could not have been – and was not – aware of any allegations against him. After all, the allegations were first made against Mr Romein in March/April 2020, which was some time after Mr. Romein had left Bellingcat.”

While tacitly acknowledging that Romein was the target of the sexual abuse allegations, Higgins insisted, “It is not clear whether the [court] judgment is about Mr. Romein as it is anonymized.”

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. “The complaints to the European Press Prize which resulted in the revocation of Mr. Romein’s laureate status were about unacceptable online behavior of Mr. Romein,” stated Higgins, referring to the withdrawal of a prestigious award to Romein in 2021. “These complaints were not linked to the allegations of sexual abuse.”

The European Press Prize announced 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 numerous “substantiated complaints… from different people.”

Higgins did not respond to requests for clarity on why Romein was suddenly terminated after five years of work with his organization.

Van De Beek, the reporter who exposed Romein’s suicide following his conviction, told The Grayzone that he called Romein’s mother to verify that her son had been found guilty of sexual abuse. “She was surprised that I knew about his conviction,” he said. “She denied any wrongdoings of her son. She called it a witch hunt.”

Van De Beek said he also spoke to an acquaintance of Romein’s, who knew him by his real name, Danyo Romijn: “He informed me about the court ruling. It was put online by the court after I had phoned them asking why the ruling wasn’t 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.”

The reporter continued, “The 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’s name and birth date are stated in the report. During the interrogation he mentions that he worked for Bellingcat.”

Ex-Bellingcat researcher claimed rape of children was ‘normal’

As a lead contributor to Interpol’s Stop Child Abuse operation, Bellingcat’s researchers were invited in mid-2017 to probe “clues” from the “background of an image with sexually explicit material involving minors,” such as curtains, furniture and clothing, which could “help crack a case.” Multiple articles on the subject on Bellingcat’s website 2018 – 2020 name Romein as a contributor, and occasionally even the lead author. In April 2020, Romein – along with Bellingcat’s “Timmi Allen,” a former Stasi operative – was shortlisted for the European Press Prize for this work.

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. 

In an official report submitted to police, Romein’s 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 “is more likely to be around 100 than 10 times.” While Romein’s defense argued his daughter’s testimony was “unreliable,” and that he should be therefore “acquitted in full,” a letter he sent her years prior appeared to corroborate her account:

“Dear [name redacted], I am really sorry for the big mistakes I have made. I didn’t realize at the time what consequences these mistakes could have for you, because everything was done with love.”

Moreover, Romein openly admitted during his interrogations by police that such behavior towards children was from his perspective “normal in connection with the free upbringing he had enjoyed.” The court found him guilty, sentencing him to five years in prison, while banning him from any or all contact with his daughter “in any way, directly or indirectly” during the same period.

It’s 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.

In 2020, a yearly Bellingcat report on its CSAM investigations revealed that four of its researchers — including Romein, who was praised for his “Fantastic research and eye for detail and precision” — collectively spent a whopping 2500 hours on the project, viewing a combined four million images in the process.

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. 

A glowing February 2023 obituary in the Dutch daily, De Volkskrant, claimed Romein died in his sleep from cardiac arrest the previous December.

The effusively positive eulogy quoted a “good friend” of Romein, a mainstream journalist named Robert van der Noordaa, claiming he played “a key role” in cracking the MH17 case, both by discovering the location from which the fatal missile had been fired, and “tracking down the suspects who have since been convicted.”

In reality, despite having repeatedly posted photos on social media of a supposed quartet of Russian and Ukrainian militants who struck MH17 with a BUK missile, The Hague’s Joint Investigative Team probe into the plane’s downing concluded in February 2023 “nothing could be found that pointed to involvement on the part of these four persons” in MH17’s shootdown.

That same month, Romein apparently took his own life rather than enter prison as a convicted pedophile.