Horror haunts satanists' victims
2002-09-19 20:27
Pretoria - Strange and inexplicable incidents occurred at the home of three
anguished young children before they finally told their mother
about being tortured by a group of satanists, the Pretoria High
Court heard on Thursday.
The mother of the seven-year-old girl and her nine-year-old and
11-year-old brothers testified on Thursday in the trial of Robin
Malcolm Claasen (38). Claasen is accused of abducting, raping and
molesting the children over a period of nine months in 2000. He has
pleaded not guilty.
For the past month the three children have been testifying in
camera through an intermediary. It is alleged that Claasen tied up
and raped, sodomised, indecently assaulted, and tortured the
children at various locations in Pretoria's city centre.
This included allegedly cutting crosses with a knife on the
11-year-old boy's wrists.
The mother, who used to work long hours, testified that the
children had developed behavioural and emotional problems as a
result of her former husband and fiancé abusing her.
Their behaviour, however, had deteriorated in 2000, when the
girl starting bedwetting more often, while the older boy suffered
more headaches. The third child had stress related head and stomach
aches.
All three had recurring nightmares about their father assaulting
their mother, and they told her about more nightmares featuring
things with ugly heads and fangs.
She noticed the crosses carved on her 11-year-old son's wrists
and once saw blue marks on his back, but he told her he had injured
himself with wire and that he had been given a hiding at school,
which was denied by the school.
One time, the boy brought home the skeleton of a goat's head.
When she found it in his cupboard, she flung it out of the window,
but a while later the boy told his mother that black things came
out of the cupboard at night.
He set a trap with a string and a broomstick and they waited in
the living room. Later they heard a loud noise and realised that
the electricity had been switched off.
Inside her son's room, they found the broom on the floor and a
strange, glowing green powder on the string and on the floor.
Another night she woke up to the sound of a loud crash. Rushing
to her son's room, she found the cupboard door had flown off its
hinges and landed on her son's bed.
The mother only realised that something was seriously wrong
after being called in for a meeting with the school psychologist
who was treating the children.
That same evening, she sat down on the bed with all three
children and started talking to them about Aids. The children then
told her about what had happened to them - things that shocked her
and sounded unreal.
"They were so anxious when they told these things to me that I
realised they were telling the truth. It felt to me as if they were
trying to tell me that they were afraid and did not know how to
handle it," she told the court.
"I told them we had to go to the police and we all walked to the
police station together. I told the police there might be satanists
involved and that the children might have been molested sexually,"
she added.
"I gave them descriptions of more than one person. The children
said there were many people, men and women, but one of them was the
boss. They described a man with long hair, tattoos and earrings."
Despite this, the family did not hear anything from the police
for several weeks and when she phoned was told that the file had
been lost.
She filed a second charge months later.
- SAPA