'I want to look like a man'
2001-10-25 23:46
Cape Town - "I don't want to look like a girl, because I'm afraid a man will
want to touch me. I have worked hard to look like a man."
These were the words of Esme van Zijl, 49, who is suing prominent Strand businessman Imker Maree Hoogenhout. He allegedly raped and sodomised her when she was a child.
In an interview on Thursday Hoogenhout denied all the charges, but could apparently not afford to contest the case in court.
Van Zijl said "make-up, stockings and high heels" were not for her.
"It represents femininity and I don't want to identify with that.
"I practise with weights all the time. I try to show people my muscles, because I do have muscles. I don't take offence when people mistake me for a
man, since this is what I have worked at. One day a guy will touch me and I will hit him there and then."
Van Zijl testified the abuse was "more concentrated" during school holidays
and happened virtually every night.
'Swear at the bastard'
"I begged my mother not to go. It sounds crazy, but while all these bad things were happening to me, I tried to think about nice things like ice cream or athletics. I drifted out of my body and watched myself from outside. Then the pain was not as bad. A person cannot survive something like that and still remain within yourself."
According to Van Zijl her brother told her to "swear at the bastard".
"I was still in primary school. I only knew one dirty word: bloody. I said it: bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody, but it didn't work. He just carried on."
In Std 5 she tried to commit suicide for the first time by drinking her
mother's sleeping tablets.
"To this day it is painful to think back to that time. I want to block it out, I want it to stop ... I want to hurt or kill myself just to make the pain in my heart go away."
Van Zijl started stabbing herself with needles. Later she discovered it was more painful to hook the needle through a piece of skin and then to pull at it.
"It started when I was 13 or 14. I could do this in my room. When I hurt like that, I could feel no other pain."
Van Zijl said she visited all the places where Hoogenhout allegedly sexually assaulted her before the court case.
"At the house in Gordon's Bay I felt like throwing up. We then went to the Burger house in Stellenbosch where Hoogenhout's office used to be. I doubled over with stomach cramps," she testified.
When she unexpectedly saw Hoogenhout recently she just froze and nearly threw up.
'I blame myself for the destruction that is my life'
Van Zijl said she only realised in 1996 that she could talk about what had happened after seeing an Oprah Winfrey programme, in which Oprah spoke about her own sexual abuse. "I could not believe she was willing to admit it. She wasn't afraid or ashamed."
Van Zijl later wrote down exactly what had happened and gave it to her partner.
"I was afraid she would leave me, because it was disgusting and filthy. Sometimes I still feel like that, why else would he have done it? I blame myself for the destruction that is my life. It is confusing, since I feel sorry for his wife. Maybe I could have refused to go to them, maybe if I had told my mother in detail what had happened ..."
When asked about the radinarrie [bogeyman] with which Hoogenhout allegedly threatened her, she said she knows "it sounds crazy, but she is still afraid that something would bite her". She always sleeps with a torch nearby and is "petrified" of the dark.
Van Zijl's partner, Rieta Potgieter, said Van Zijl once pushed a safety pin through her cheek. She is obsessed with exercise and does not wear panties, as it reminds her of the time her mother beat her because she soiled her panties. She changes her shorts up to six times a day, Potgieter testified.
The case before Judge Hennie Nel was postponed on Thursday, but no date has been set yet.