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SUSAN LEMMER, mother of Cézanne Visser - widely known as Advocate Barbie - describes seeing her daughter being sentenced to seven years in jail as the blackest day of her life.
After the sentencing in Pretoria Susan collapsed and was taken to hospital. Later she spoke exclusively to YOU about the nine terrible years since Cézanne was transformed into a sex criminal, eventually being convicted of sex acts with girls from a children’s home.
She recalls Cézanne telling her that her ex-lover, Dirk Prinsloo, forced her to eat his faeces and drink his urine, and that Prinsloo, now jailed for bank robbery in Belarus, made the once successful young woman perform degrading sexual acts.
Cézanne is free on bail to approach the Supreme Court of Appeal for the right to appeal.
“Cézanne believes she has to go to jail,” Susan says. “She believes she deserves to be punished. But my child doesn’t belong in jail. She’s now a fragile, broken little girl who’s clinging fanatically to her mother again.”
Over the past six years she has been a pleasure to have around her, Susan says, even though the trial hung like a sword over their heads. “She now has a new friend and they’re very happy. But she has developed a total aversion to sex. The friendship is platonic.”
Cézanne is trying to rebuild her old self and is having some of her tattoos removed; her breast implants were removed in 2005. This, and the court case, has ruined them financially - and it still isn’t over.
“People ask how I can still stand by my child after all this,” Susan says. “But a mother doesn’t give up on her child. I know what she did wasn’t right but I know why she did it. My love for her is my anchor and will always be my anchor.
“There’s still a lot we haven’t spoken about and a lot of hurt that has to be healed. But I know my child is back. Advocate Barbie is long dead. She’s once again my Cézanne.”
* Read the full interview in the latest issue of YOU.
