I Have Life, page 12
I get to the phone, but it’s a pay phone and I have no money. I eventually wake up shaking and sweating.
A few nights later I have another dream. This time I’m walking along a country road. There are fields and cottages. I feel danger but try not to appear afraid. I must get home to the other side of the river. A woman befriends me. She is sophisticated, wearing smart clothes. She wears her dark hair in a bob. I trust her. I know she will help me across the river. Once I am on the other side she turns, and I realise she is evil. I cannot run away. A black car pulls up. There are several men inside. I do not fight. There is nothing I can do to get away.
The therapy sessions helped. It was the only space I could find to connect what was in my head to the rest of me. I needed to find a way to link my subconscious with my conscious mind. The dreams were clearly a manifestation of that.
What I needed to do somehow was find a grip, or a way of stopping that overwhelming, paralysing fear. There was always fear, never anger.
It was frustrating trying to fit in the therapy sessions around my work. I would always try to make early morning, lunch time or late afternoon appointments. Sometimes I would get to work at 9 a.m. after a particularly debilitating session and have to deal with clients as if nothing was wrong.
I had trouble trying to keep it all together.
I had this need to see Melvin all the time. He was so cool and level-headed and he wanted to talk about the case. I suspected other people were getting a little tired of it all now. I was obviously trying to pretend that I was coping. I understood that unless someone had personally experienced a trauma of this nature they would not be able to understand the underlying turmoil I felt. And why should they?
I dashed out of the office at odd times to see Melvin. Sometimes it was just to have a cigarette or some coffee. I always felt better afterwards. He was incredibly kind and caring and never ever said he couldn’t see me.
Later in the month I heard news that cheered me up considerably. Tiaan was to be given a special citation by the Port Elizabeth Municipality and the SAPS and would be flying to PE to receive the award. I called him immediately to congratulate him. We had telephoned each other regularly. I felt a very close bond with this shy, brave young man and couldn’t think of a more deserving person.
He asked me how I was and I told him about my ups and downs. He told me it was only natural that I would see-saw between exhaustion and confusion and that it would take time. We ended our conversation thrilled that we would be reunited.
I started going out less and when I did go out I felt odd, as if I had a secret no one else knew about.
I had always found it easy to mix socially. I liked the company of people, the connection, the swapping of little bits of irrelevant information. But I couldn’t do it any more.
There were times when I felt small. I wanted to be a little girl whom someone protected. I wanted to be looked after and not have to make decisions by myself. I didn’t want to worry, plan or concentrate on anything.
As the trial date loomed on June 12 it began to become the entire focus of my life. Before then I had had a preliminary meeting with Melvin at the attorney general’s office. Melvin wanted to acquaint me with the procedures, who sat where, where I would sit, where Frans and Theuns would be seated in relation to me. He showed me the witness box and told me that I should address all my answers to the judge and not the lawyers who would be asking the questions.
I was sent to a psychologist for an assessment that would later be handed to the court. It was all so tiring. But the one thing I wanted to do was be utterly ready for the trial. Several people kept reassuring me that when that was over it would all be behind me. I almost looked forward to it because of that. This, I thought, would be the last lap in the race.
15
ALISON
My Day in Court
CASE NUMBER CC15/95, otherwise known as ‘the Noordhoek ripper’ trial, kicked off in the Supreme Court in Port Elizabeth on the mild winter’s morning of June 12, 1995. Ten days had been set aside for the hearing and once again Ettienne had given me time off to attend the proceedings.
I felt guilty about taking so much time off work but I wanted to sit in every day. I did not want to miss a single word or nuance and was determined to see it through until the end, until I saw Frans and Theuns being sentenced and sent down the stairs to the prison cells.
I woke that morning feeling quite composed. A few months earlier I had dreaded this day, but now I was a little excited. More apprehensive than excited, I should say. It was the same feeling one gets before going in to write an exam or start a long race. But it was a contest I had been preparing for for months. I had lived it, breathed it, dreamed it. And now it was about to begin.
The previous week Frans had called some sort of press conference at the offices of the Murder and Robbery Squad. Every weekend paper had carried a photograph of him with his hair shaved at the sides and the rest swept up into a minuscule, mushroom-like pony tail at the top of his head. I couldn’t believe it. He sat there at a table, a cup of coffee casually in front of him, talking confidently to the journalists who seemed to have lapped it all up.
He had had a ‘change of heart’, he told the press, and was calling the conference to ‘denounce Satanism and explain how he was possessed by demons’. He now regarded himself as an ‘apostle Paul who killed Christians and people in synagogues but managed to change and turn to Jesus’.
That weekend, he said, he would be undergoing some sort of exorcism in the cells. His wife Natalie and his two-year-old son Joshua would also be ‘freed’ of the demons he had brought into their lives.
The whole thing smacked of a crude and cheap publicity stunt and I was amazed that the police had allowed him to talk to the press while he was still in custody and especially so close to the start of the court case.
I doubted that his so-called conversion had happened at all, although I would not have begrudged him his salvation, if it had been true. The timing was so wrong and it was all so obvious. I thought it was a clear last-ditch attempt on his part to gain favour with the authorities and the people of Port Elizabeth.
I noticed that Theuns was not there and wondered why. Perhaps it wouldn’t have looked ‘good’ if both of them had suddenly ‘found the Lord’ and ‘seen the light’. It would have made the entire bizarre circus even more improbable.
Frans was shrewder than I had thought. He was clearly a skilled manipulator and enjoyed all the attention that I felt he certainly did not deserve. Still, no one bought it.
Everyone agreed there was nothing sincere about this sudden turn-around, this miraculous change of heart.
My dad collected me from my home and drove me to the Supreme Court. It is an austere and grand building with grey marble floors, plush maroon carpets and imposing columns. Melvin had already shown me around so I did not feel unfamiliar in the surroundings. There was an incredible buzz inside and outside the court. The place was overrun with journalists, photographers, news cameramen and curious members of the public. Melvin escorted us through a back entrance so that we could escape the crush. As we snaked our way through the corridors I was afraid that we might bump into Frans and Theuns somewhere. Luckily it didn’t happen.
Everyone was clearly expecting a sensational trial and I felt as if all eyes were on me as I walked in.
The big news in the paper that morning was the sudden and mysterious withdrawal ‘for ethical reasons’ of Frans’s attorney, Henry Lerm. Mr Lerm had sat in on Frans’s ‘press conference’ on the Friday and I wondered whether something had happened there that had triggered his decision. He was keeping mum about it though.
Criminal Court A had started filling up with people quite early in the morning. It was a small, wood-panelled room, plush but claustrophobic with no view of the outside world. It felt like a sealed pod or a quarantine station cut off from everything else.
The first day was taken up with the testimony of the first woman, the young Technikon student Frans had raped in February. Frans was charged separately with that case but Theuns remained next to him in the dock.
I was not allowed into the court until I had given my testimony so I spent the morning in a small waiting-room smoking cigarettes, chatting to various friends and drinking endless cups of coffee.
Mom, dad and friends were inside the court and I wished I could have been there.
The woman’s evidence made the front page of the afternoon newspapers. Apparently she had broken down while giving testimony and I wondered if it would happen to me too.
It was the first time I had read the details of the case and they were horrific. Frans had abducted the woman while she was doing a survey on a pizza parlour in Central. She had been employed by a rival company to ‘spy’ on the business. She was a sitting duck. Frans had pounced on her and shoved a gun to her head before telling her to move over.
He then drove her out towards Noordhoek where he sexually assaulted her and then raped her. As the story unfolded in newsprint I sympathised with the woman. I knew what she must have felt.
After raping the terrified girl, Frans drove her to a roadhouse and bought her a sandwich and a rose.
His sick gesture nauseated me. The arrogance and audacity of it.
Frans had raped her again after that, all the while chatting to her as if she was a long-lost girlfriend. After that he dropped her off, telling her that she was ‘an amazing person’ and that he hoped he could ‘make it up to her some time’.
She had been so traumatised by the three-hour ordeal that she had not told anyone. She had gone home to her parents too petrified to speak. A week later she had told a friend who had urged her to report it to the police. It had affected her so badly, she said, that at times she had gone out at night, deliberately placing herself in dangerous situations. It is apparently a common reaction in a victim who is suffering from post-traumatic shock.
June 13. Today I would get my day in court, but only after Frans and Theuns’s second victim, the young pregnant woman, had testified during the morning session. Once again the trial dominated the morning’s papers. Frans had been convicted the previous day of two charges of rape, abduction and indecent assault. Sentencing for those charges would come later at the end of the trial when the judge handed down a final verdict on all the charges.
That day I wore an outfit a good friend, Nicki, had designed for the occasion. It was a light blue trouser suit. I wanted to look good. I wanted Frans and Theuns to see I was strong and that I was holding it all together. The suit was like armour, it protected me and made me feel confident. I also thought about the many meetings I had had with the prosecution advocates Grant Buchner and Hannelie Bakker before the trial. They had taken me through how they would lead the evidence and had prepared me for questions the defence might ask. I was nervous but ready.
A surprise witness was called by the state that morning. The woman, Dane de Bruyn, had called the police after reading about my attack and reported that two men fitting the descriptions of Frans and Theuns had tried to accost her while she was parking her car, in broad daylight, in Humewood that same day.
It was 12.30 p.m. on the afternoon of my attack when they had tried to wrench open her car door. They had fled when she managed to lock the doors after Frans had looked away for ‘a split second’.
That split second had saved her life.
I had watched as the second young victim had arrived at the court that morning. She looked so vulnerable with her beautiful pregnant belly. She was close to term and I hoped that testifying would not be too much of an ordeal for her.
Although I wanted to, I didn’t feel that I could talk to her. We had only one thing in common. Both of us had been raped by Frans and Theuns. I caught her eye and hoped that she could see my empathy and that I felt strongly for her.
I would have to sit it out in the waiting-room while she testified. I knew I would feel safe there, away from all the eyes that watched me so intently. I was thrilled as I stepped inside to see Tiaan perched on a bench, grinning from ear to ear. We gave each other huge hugs. I was so pleased to see him. He is so special, so quiet and self-effacing. My special hero. We were not allowed to talk to each other about the case that morning which was, of course, hugely frustrating.
Instead we caught up with other news and talked about the award he was going to receive for saving my life. A glittering ceremony had been arranged in the City Hall where the award, given jointly by the South African Police and the City of Port Elizabeth, was to be handed over.
I felt most comfortable around him and Melvin, my two new friends. They were in this with me.
The court adjourned for lunch before I was called. I was growing tense; I wanted it to all begin now.
Mom, dad, a few friends and I remained in the waiting-room munching our take-away food.
There was an almost festive air in the room. Everyone talked around the court case, trying to relax, but I knew they couldn’t. They were just as nervous as I was.
I didn’t really want to be there. Actually I didn’t feel as if I was there at all.
I could hardly eat and felt totally detached from it all.
I actually wanted to be with Melvin and Tiaan. They knew exactly how I felt.
After lunch everyone else disappeared into the court again, including Frans’s wife, Natalie who had come with her father David Naidoo each day to hear evidence. She was a pretty young woman with short hair and striking oriental features. She looked such a child and I wondered how she could still support Frans knowing everything she knew now.
She was clearly under his spell and I don’t mean that in a demonic sense. Frans was an arch manipulator and a supremely confident liar who had convinced her several times, even after he had been arrested, that everyone else was to blame and not him.
I waited for my name to be called out and when it was it sounded so weird. It felt as if they were summoning someone else.
The same odd feeling of detachment I had felt the night of the attack returned as I stepped through the side door a young policeman held open.
I saw them immediately. Frans and Theuns were sitting in the dock, right in my field of vision. Melvin had warned me that I would see them first and that I should not look at them. I looked away. There was a blur of faces and I caught a glimpse of one or two familiar smiles. Everyone kept their eyes on me as I stepped into the wooden witness stand.
I was acutely aware of Frans and Theuns sitting there. I could feel their presence. Grant, Hannelie and Melvin sat in front of them and smiled at me as I took up my position.
I looked at Judge Chris Jansen and he too gave me a little smile. He was a handsome, fit-looking, distinguished man with a kind face and a calm demeanour and he immediately made me feel at ease.
Grant stood up and led me through my evidence. It took two hours to get through my testimony. Throughout it all I felt disconnected, apart from myself. There was total silence in the court as I recounted the events of that night.
I could hear my own voice, it sounded clear and confident. Every now and again, after a particularly gruesome bit in the story, I would hear a gasp from the gallery.
As I relayed some of the smaller details of the night, I wondered what Frans and Theuns were thinking. I hoped that they were shocked and amazed that I had remembered everything so clearly. It was very tempting, but I stopped myself from looking at them.
When it was finally over I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment. I felt triumphant and very proud of myself. I did not cry, I did not break down. I told it as it had happened.
When I had finished the defence lawyers cross-questioned me. Frans’s counsel, an Advocate Frost, seemed lost. He had been appointed to defend Frans after Henry Lerm had stepped down. He was clearly not enjoying it.
He could not really defend Frans and at times I felt he was grasping at straws, quibbling about minor details as if he had to pretend to be putting up some semblance of an argument.
Theuns’s advocate irritated me. He, too, felt he had to try and poke holes in a watertight case. The judge admonished him several times as he badgered me over and over again on some minor detail, like whether Theuns was actually in the car when Frans had leaned over to strangle me. I could see where he was going. He was trying to suggest that Theuns was not in the car, and that if he had been he might have been able to stop Frans.
He didn’t listen to my answers and hammered away at the same pointless question until the judge stopped him. I stuck to my guns. I was proud of how vividly and clearly I recalled things.
And then suddenly it was all over. I had wanted to say so much more and could not believe I had covered so much ground. I left the courtroom through a side entrance and re-entered through the back to take my seat between my mom and dad afterwards. Mom squeezed my hand and dad stroked my back.
‘You were wonderful,’ mom leaned over and whispered.
Frans and Theuns had their backs to me now and I found Frans’s water fountain hairstyle ridiculous. I was pleased I did not have to see their faces.
Then Tiaan took the stand. He strode confidently into the court. He was a wonderful witness.
He was soft-spoken but totally poised. I was so touched that he had flown down from Johannesburg to do this. I was proud of him.
There were more gasps and shaking of heads in the public gallery as Tiaan told the judge about my injuries and that we had waited more than 90 minutes for the ambulance to arrive.
As Dr Angelov took the stand Tiaan moved in next to me in the public gallery. People were riveted by the medical evidence, and so was I. It was the first time I had heard, in such detail, about my injuries and what Dr Angelov had had to do in surgery. I was so proud of him too.
