Bizarre Satanist trial
2002-09-26 22:23
Pretoria - Her 11-year-old son could move objects with his eyes while in a trance-like state, a mother told the Pretoria High Court on Thursday.
Continuing with a saga of strange and inexplicable incidents
that took place since her three children were allegedly abducted,
indecently assaulted and tortured by a group of Satanists, the
children's mother spent a third day being cross-examined by
defence counsel Deon Hugo.
She was called as a State witness in the trial of Robin Malcolm Classen (38) who has denied guilt on 10 charges ranging from rape and abduction to assault and indecent assault.
It is alleged that over a period of months two years ago he
subjected a seven-year-old girl and her brothers, 9 and 11, to a
series of depraved Satanist rituals.
The three children have already testified in camera through an
intermediary.
According to the mother, she had personally witnessed her eldest son meditating. The people who took him had taught him to meditate. When he meditated like this, a strange voice came out of his mouth.
Once, when he chased his brother and sister with an axe he spoke with the same strange voice and said: "The devil told me to kill you," the mother testified.
To this, Hugo remarked that he was no authority on devil
worship, but had never heard of them meditating.
She also claimed to have witnessed an incident when her son
moved a piece of paper and a glass from a coffee table by simply
staring at it.
"I saw it in my sitting room with my own eyes. It gave me a fright. He sat on the carpet and looked at the paper and the glass and I saw it flying through the air. If I had not ducked, the glass would have hit me.
"I screamed: what are you doing, and he said: sorry mom, I was concentrating.
"I'm laughing about it now, but it really gave me a fright. I initially did not want to believe that he could move things with his eyes, but now I have to believe it," she said.
Judge Lettie Malope would not allow Hugo to recall the child to demonstrate his abilities. "You're not going to call him back to do tricks for us," she told Hugo.
The mother also revealed that all of her children had told her
about demons with horns. The eldest son told her the people who
took them knew where they lived, were guarded by the devil and sent messages to the demons.
Her children were scared that if Classen came out of jail, he
would search for them and kill them.
The children told her that the devil was sometimes with "Uncle Robbie" (the accused). They said the devil looked "just like Uncle Robbie, only he had horns, red eyes and fangs".
Her son also claimed that crosses cut onto his wrists were used to open "secret chambers full of demons", claimed he had been crowned with a crown containing a real eye, that he changed into a "monster with huge teeth and eyes" in bad weather, that he was hit by 30 persons with an iron pole (and survived to tell the tale) and that he was forced to eat spiders and the tongue of a snake and drink its blood.
All three children claimed their blood was "exchanged" with that of their captors in a "soul exchange ceremony". None of them had tested positively for Aids.
Her daughter had recently insisted on showing her a drawing that "Uncle Robbie" had made on her hand before doing "bad things" with her.
When the child made the drawing on her hand with a black ballpoint pen, her hand turned red and became feverishly hot. They could not wash off the drawing for two days, the mother said.
The trial continues.
- SAPA