In the middle of class a boy stormed into a classroom at the Thorbecke school in Zwolle. One of the girls in the class, Maria Mosterd, needed to come with him right away. "Her cousin has been in a car accident!" This is how, from the age of twelve, Maria would be summoned by her pimp or his accomplices when it was time for her to go to work - as a prostitute and drugs courier.

Real men don't eat cheese In Echte mannen eten geen kaas (Real men don't eat cheese, 2008) Maria Mosterd describes her life as a victim of a loverboy. Maria is twelve and she longs for a more exciting life. She meets a boy hanging around outside her school: Manou. At first, Manou buys her clothes, but within two weeks he has raped and forced her into prostitution. She starts cutting classes. She is threatened and beaten by several boys and men who use her as a prostitute and a drugs courrier. Maria's feelings for Manou are ambivalent. He is responsible for her situation but at the same time she can't seem to let go of him. There are other boys too. A boy called Juanez rapes her at knifepoint but later she writes that he was also "a lot of fun". Maria ends up testifying against Juanez in court. Maria's mother Lucie is initially quite taken with the fat, friendly Manou who has come into her daughter's life. After four years, Maria confesses to a teacher that she has been gang-raped. The teacher makes her tell her mother. Maria lives in a succession of halfway houses, foster homes and boarding schools where Manou's accomplices are always looking for her. In the end she goes to India for half a year to cut all ties with her past.

Maria Mosterd is not an exception. Around the Netherlands, as in other countries, young pimps prey on young girls like Maria. They park their cars outside high schools and wait for the girls to pass by on their bicycles. In the Netherlands these young men are known as 'loverboys'. They target the more vulnerable girls, win them over until they fall in love with them, and then make them sleep with other men for money. The schools know about them but they're not doing anything to stop them.

Apology

At least, that's what Maria Mosterd, now 19-years old, and her mother Lucie claim in their lawsuit against the Tohrbecke school. Both women have written books about the time Maria's life was controlled by loverboy Manou. Both were bestsellers. Now that Maria's case is a famous one in the Netherlands, she and her mother are suing the school for damages and demanding changes to national school policies.

Lucie Mosterd says the school failed to provide a safe environment for Maria from 2001 to 2005, and was negligent in its truancy policy. She is demanding 74,000 euros in damages. But more than anything she says she wants the school to apologise, and to make it mandatory for all Dutch school to have a policy to deal with the loverboys phenomenon. "I have given them plenty of time but they never took us serious," she says.

Mosterd filed a complaint against the school with the national ombudsman for education in 2006. That complaint was accepted. But it remains to be seen whether a school can be held legally responsible when its pupils fall prey to pimps.

Lucie Mosterd's lawyer, Ernst Muller, thinks it can. "Schools are supposed to act if a pupil fails to show up. Maria's mother wasn't informed until three years later, the attendance officer wasn't informed either," he says.

On top of that a school is under the obligation to provide a safe information, says Muller. "Not enough was done to reduce the risk of the girls coming into contact with the loverboys."

Blame game

The school disagrees. Thorbecke principal Hans Schapenk told the local newspaper de Stentor that Maria came into contact with her pimp outside school hours. Schapenk refuses to comment further on the merits of the case. He says he would rather "turn it around". "What about the responsibility of the parents? It is absurd to want to blame the schools for everything."

But Lucie Mosterd says she was unable to take responsibility precisely because she had no idea her daughter was cutting classes. The problem of the 'loverboys' is much bigger than people think, she says. "Something needs to be done."

A report commissioned by the board of education confirms Mosterd's claim. Published in april, the report says most schools barely have a policy for promoting what is officially called "sexual assertiveness," a term which covers the loverboys phenomenon. It also says that loverboys are a problem at many schools. At vocational schools, up to eighty percent of the students have experienced sexual assertiveness issues.

Thorbecke college says it does have a policy. "We give information about loverboys through educational courses and plays," says principal Schapenk. Not enough, says Lucie Mosterd. "Schools should be obligated to have a loverboy policy. If they see girls being picked up from school in flashy cars, they should take down the license plates. If they see boys hanging around the school, they have to confront them. If necessary they should inform the police."

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Aline Tigchelaar thinks this is a good idea. Tigchelaar works for the loverboys and youth prostitution hotline Fier Fryslan in the northern province of Friesland. She gives talks at schools and she trains teachers. Friesland saw many complaints about loverboys last year.

She agrees with Schapenk that loverboys are not the sole responsibility of the schools. "But it is at school that the problems first manifest themselves," she says. Teachers have to be more alert for signs of trouble. "For instance girls starting to change their behaviour and dress styles or getting picked up in expensive cars."

But according to the report, schools are afraid that their image will suffer if they acknowledge the problem by offering specific courses on sexual assertiveness and loverboys. Lucie Mosterd is familiar with that fear. "When I suggested such courses to the former principal, he said he was afraid that if his school was the only one to offer these courses people would think the school had a problem."

Schapenk says he is getting fed up with the whole issue. "That girl was here years ago, but her story just keeps surfacing again and again." Maybe a court case would not be such a bad thing, he says. "Maybe then it will be determined once and for all where the responsibility of the school lies."