Prinsloo still haunts Barbie
2009-06-26 09:36
Sonja Carstens
Pretoria – Alleged sex criminal Dirk Prinsloo is still haunting Cézanne Visser and her mother, even though he was arrested in Belarus about two weeks ago.
"The living hell we've been going through just won't come to an end. We live through the nightmare day after day," said Visser's mother Susan Lemmer on Thursday.
She said they wished Prinsloo would disappear "off the face of the earth".
"We can sleep a bit more easily since his capture, because we now know we're safer. He can't hurt us anymore. Now, however, we're living with the knowledge that when he is eventually extradited to South Africa, we'll have to testify against him as soon as his trial - regarding alleged rape and indecent assault - begins again," said Lemmer.
Perhaps had plastic surgery
After Prinsloo fled the country in May 2006, Visser – also known as Advocate Barbie - stood trial on charges of rape and indecent assault on her own.
Lemmer said she and her daughter are both convinced that Prinsloo has had plastic surgery around his eyes, after seeing photos on the cover of Beeld that were taken when he was arrested in Belarus.
"When she saw the newspaper, Cézanne immediately said: 'It is him, but he looks different. He's had work done around his eyes'," Lemmer related.
According to Lemmer, her daughter put a piece of paper over Prinsloo's face, because she didn't want to see his "evil eyes".
Even though he's behind bars, his eyes still scare her to this day," Lemmer said.
Just like Fransie Meiring, who says she saw Prinsloo in March at the OR Tambo airport, Lemmer is convinced that Prinsloo is the man she saw on an off-ramp to the N1 highway in Centurion earlier this year.
Wanted to get caught
She believes he has been in South Africa, even though his legal passport doesn't show any sign of it. Since Prinsloo fled the country in 2006, he's had constant help from people in South Africa," said Lemmer.
She says Visser believes Prinsloo deliberately tried to rob the bank with a toy gun with the hope of being caught, since his attempts to reach out to South African authorities by e-mail in March had failed.
"He wanted to get caught because he was desperate for money. He's not stupid. He knows very well that by the time he has served out his sentence in Belarus, it'll be extremely difficult to once again try to convince his alleged victims in South Africa to testify against him," Lemmer added.
That's also the reason why Lemmer is willing to lay a charge of attempted rape against Prinsloo.
Earlier, Lemmer had testified about two alleged incidents in the North Gauteng High Court.
According to her, she never went to the police with those complaints because she didn't want to put her child in an even more precarious
position.
"He has ruined Cézanne's life, and also the lives of all the other alleged victims. He must pay for his actions and never be set free and allowed back into society," Lemmer said.
- Beeld