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The drastic action Leon Nel took to save his married daughter’s life sounds like a bestselling thriller, culminating in her confessing that she’s a heroin addict.
Then he asked the High Court to intervene in the life of 21-year-old Chantel Clur.
The court ordered her to spend eight months in drug rehab and took the unusual step of ordering her husband, Greg Clur, to have no contact with her during this period.
Leon (44) hopes he has finally succeeded in helping Chantel to begin to turn her life around.
In 2002 his wife, Suzelle (43), suffered brain damage when she was assaulted in an armed robbery. The family lived in East London and Leon headed the police forensics department there. Chantel was 11 at the time, and her brother, Leon junior, was 10.
Leon left the police service and started a fraud investigating business and Chantel joined him. After a romance collapsed when she was 19 she spent three days in a psychiatric clinic where she met Greg Clur.
Leon says her behaviour changed after that and Leon suspected they were using drugs. Chantel later moved in with Clur and secretly married him.
‘‘I warned her he was going to turn her into a drug addict but she refused to listen.’’
Last month she and Clur admitted themselves to a rehabilitation centre and Leon saw a glimmer of hope. But they left after only a week and Leon, fearing they’d leave SA, asked the court to intervene.
The last time he saw Chantel she was behind bars after failing to report for rehab.
‘‘Chantel isn’t a bad person,’’ he says. ‘‘I hope one day she’ll realise what I did was in her best interest. I want her to regain control over her life and make her own decisions.’’
Read the full article in YOU, 28 April 2011.
