Dear Dr. Phil,

Let me begin by saying that I always very much enjoyed your appearances on the Oprah show, admired your “no-nonsense� response and forthrighteousness.

Your show on the disappearance of Natalee Halloway though disappointed me greatly. There have been too many reports on this issue with one-sided reporting with a lot of untruths in it in your country already, but when we heard that Dr. Phil would spent an hour on this issue, we thought that maybe finally we would get an honest view.

But when I watched your show, my astonishment grew. What happened here with Natalee is a terrible tragedy, and that you are willing and putting your effort in helping her mother finding out the truth about it I greatly commend, but blaming a whole island population for what happened before and after is simply too horrible and too unrealistic and too untrue for words.

Aruba did ALL it could and more to help find Natalee and solve the mystery,  do you know of one instance that somewhere in your country people were giving days off from work to help search for a missing person? Do you know of one instance that you know of in your country that F-16 planes were send in the air to look for a missing girl? So many rescue-teams turned this place upside-down, damaging nature, people opened their homes, restaurants, hotels and hearts to aid the family? How many girls disappear in the U.S.A. on a monthly,weekly basis, how many college girls on campus are being raped with the date-rape-drug, how many unsolved murders,attacks etc. are there in your country? Almost daily some newspaper in your country has such a report!  

Are you advising people NOT to go to your shows in California where at least two men of whom most people think murdered their wife walk free and another of whom many people think he molested children? But you believe in your justice system right? Well, we do so in ours too, and as long as there is no HARD evidence to prove that the three boys commited a crime, you simply cannot prosecute, how frustrating this sometimes may be!

Then at last to correct some comments made in your show: that sometimes drugs are put in drinks is a sad given around the world, so also in your country, but to suggest that it is common practice in Aruba, is preposterous! We are part of the Dutch kingdom (your commend that the v.d. Sloots “fled� is also unjust, they can be picked up in Holland just as easy!), so a law-abiding country, where such a situation, being proven, most certainly would be prosecuted! Mr. v.d. Sloot is NOT a judge, he was in training to BECOME a judge, which is no longer the case.

Aruba cannot prosecute Joran for having sex, with an apparently drunk, Natalee, she is 18yrs old, which in our country is considered adult and she willingly got into the car with the three boys. For three months these boys were interrogated by our local police, assisted by your FBI,as well as  interrogated by special agents flown in from Holland again and again, and no definite proof came out of all that. And the “holier then thou� natalee-presentation is, although very understandable from her mother’s side, also besides the truth, according to different reports.

You just have to go to one spring-break in your own Florida to see how happy celebrating teenagers behave, so don’t blame Aruba for that!  Don’t misunderstand me, it is a very sad case! It affected all of us in Aruba very deeply. After all, in all the years of millions of tourists coming to our island this was a first for us!

We are an island of very hospitable peace-loving people, which millions of your countrymen, among them many repeat guests, can affirm, if you only let them!… So don’t put blame on us for something that could have happened anywhere to anyone !

Do you know, that in spite of all the negative publicity about Aruba from your country, the people in Aruba have made a generous effort to collect money (already more than $40.000, which for a small country like ours is, don’t you think, a substantial amount!) for the disaster in New Orleans? Something which can’t be said of you when we last year had a natural disaster in our small country!  And again, I applaud you for assisting Beth in finding the truth about a mothers worst nightmare, and I wish you the greatest success in doing so! But please!do so with an open and fair mind!!

Just a concerned Aruban citizen,who by the way, just to let you know, doesn’t know any of the people involved in this case.