The trial of a 50-year-old police commissioner accused of raping two women was ajourned on Thursday to 21 November in the Brussels Correctional Court.
The incidents allegedly took place in 2019 and 2014, but the commissioner vehemently denies the allegations. The court postponed the case without beginning to examine it.
The case surfaced when a 32-year-old woman filed a complaint against Commissioner J.R. in June 2019.
J.R., who works as a policy advisor at the Standing Committee of the Local Police, had attended a two-day seminar in Machelen in May 2019.
According to the plaintiff, an employee of the seminar’s hosting company, the commissioner followed her to her hotel room and raped her.
During the investigation into the alleged assault, an incident from 2014 surfaced. Investigators interrogated J.R.’s former partners, and one of them claimed she had also been a victim of sexual misconduct.
The woman and the commissioner had lived together for some time and, years after their break-up, they ran into each other at a meeting. J.R. invited her to dinner, but in the car park of the restaurant, he allegedly forced her to orally satisfy him.
In his police hearing, J.R. dismissed the woman’s complaint as a gratuitous accusation.
Regarding the incident in Machelen, he pleaded mutual consent.
