Barbie porn photos ‘shocking’

2009-06-18 22:02

Pretoria - Former Pretoria advocate Cezanne Visser closed her defence against sex-related charges on Thursday.

Acting High Court Judge Chris Eksteen postponed Visser's trial on 14 counts involving minor girls and adult women to August 28, when final argument would be presented.

He said judgment would probably be ready by the beginning of the court's last term in October.

Visser, also known as Advocate Barbie, had denied guilt on all of the charges.

She insisted she could not be held accountable for her actions because of her lover Dirk Prinsloo's coercive control over her.

Had sex in front of child

Her trial was separated from that of Prinsloo after he absconded while on a court-sanctioned business trip to Russia several years ago.

He was arrested in the Republic of Belarus last week after allegedly trying to rob a bank, and was awaiting trial in that country.

Proceedings for his extradition to South Africa were pending.

Visser earlier told the court in graphic detail of her and Prinsloo's sexual life which included having sex with him in front of a young girl from a children's home.

She said she never made her own decisions while she was with Prinsloo and it felt as if he had taken out her brain and replaced it with his own.

Prinsloo a sexual sadist - psychologist

She only started feeling human again when she resumed contact with her mother, Visser testified.

Psychologist Jonathan Scholtz diagnosed Visser as suffering from battered woman syndrome and depression and said she needed corrective psychotherapy.

He described Prinsloo as a sexual sadist and paedophile who had subjected Visser to severe sexual abuse and achieved total control over her life through fear.

Psychiatric social worker Hendrien Nortje said Visser came from an unstable background, where she feared her father and obeyed orders without question.

Nortje said on Thursday she had found Prinsloo's pornographic photos of Visser "emotionally shocking". They were vastly different from the person she had come to know while Visser was under observation at a psychiatric hospital.

She said Visser's eyes had been sad during her period of observation, but her eyes were dead in the photos and she looked like someone who was not in control, or even someone who was on drugs.
 

- SAPA