After 24 years of vicious abuse at the hands of her husband, justice may finally be done for Anne Ribets
Charlene Smith
Anne Ribets is tiny and well groomed. Her appearance belies the fact that for 24 years her husband – now ex-husband – has regularly beaten stabbed and attacked her. He once allegedly abducted her and stabbed her 20 times with a screwdriver – she retains the scars on her back. He also allegedly stabbed her sister.
He has more than one conviction against him, and numerous acquittals – because uninterested police and prosecutors have failed to gather adequate evidence.
Ribets is a classic example of how the system and laws – no matter how good the publicity around them, such as for the new domestic violence legislation – mean nothing if police and judicial officers have no interest in making those laws live.
However, Gauteng’s MEC for Safety and Security, Nomvula Mokonyane, is now taking a special interest in her case. “I am concerned the system has failed Anne in the past,” she says, but adds that better laws are now in place and “our office will monitor this case”.
Anne Ribets reflects the confusion of the woman badly battered. She has divorced and remarried Keith Bennett three times since they were first married in 1976. A police officer who arrested him says, “He was meek and mild, compliant. He puts on this act as if to say, ‘I would hurt no one.’ He is very manipulative.”
When he came to his ex-wife’s house in February he allegedly knocked her unconscious and shot her friend three times. The friend has just been discharged from a month in intensive care. According to police, Bennett then drove around for hours with his six-year-old and 16-year-old in the car until police got their top hostage negotiator to convince him to release the children and hand himself over. One of the children is still in his care.
Bennett is currently out on bail of R5E000. Police say they have not been able to find the weapon used in the shooting; none is registered in his name, according to police.
February was not the first time Bennett allegedly used a firearm in an attack against his ex-wife. Last year in April she laid a charge of rape – during which a firearm was allegedly used – and housebreaking against the man she divorced in 1997. The case was dismissed because of a lack of evidence.
Last year another charge laid against him for violating a restraining order issued in 1997 was also dismissed for lack of evidence.
The beatings started within months of their marriage in 1976, Ribets says. “The abuse was not that bad, just punches. Each time he would be so sorry. Sometimes he would blame me. He would say, ‘Do you see what you made me do?’ I would just keep quiet.”
The following year she fell pregnant with the first of three children. He hit her on the head, she says; and that required seven stitches. “I was so disgusted by what was happening. This had never happened to my mother or anyone I knew. I thought if I stayed and kept trying he would change. I thought it was important that my children had a father.”
By September 1982, the violence was escalating. Ribets was stabbed three times and her sister four times. Bennett was found guilty and received a five-year suspended sentence.
Grant Hoyland of Fluxman, Rabinowitz, Raphaely, Weiner – who has represented Bennett on seven cases since 1987 – did not know about the incident in February. He said Bennett had not briefed him on the matter.
But he said Ribets had “shown a track record of a pack of lies. Her versions have been totally unbelievable. You should look at the record of her evidence since 1987. Mr Bennett was not even called to testify at the end of last year when she claimed he had broken his restraining order. Her evidence was so unbelievable. She claimed he came to the house and [she] had statements from the neighbours who said a white man came and was banging on burglar bars. [Bennett is dark-skinned].”
Hoyland said he did not know what motive Ribets could have for lying. “Ask her,” he says.
Attempts to contact Bennett have failed.
Says Ribets, “I come from a family where there is no divorce. I was the first one of my family to get divorced. Many times I feel my death coming. Every time I thank God I survived. It is not my time to die. God has something great in store for me.”
Says a director in the large company she works for as a bookkeeper: “You cannot imagine what this woman has been through. I never imagined the law could be so ineffective. She is a fantastic person. We value her.”
Ribets is intensely religious. The diary which she began keeping last year meticulously notes biblical phrases she learns in Bible study at the Jesus Celebration Centre, as well as attacks by her ex-husband. Among her entries is this one: “4/11/98 threatened to shoot me; 27/8/97 parked outside came to my flat, had to go to police station for protection; 17/9/97 charged him, was arrested and released again; 17/4/99 22h30 banging on door; 18/4/99 21h45 saw him outside.”
It also carries entries detailing what her six-year-old son Isidore says: “5 May 1999, We came home just after six … We were still in the car parked in the garage when Isidore said to me that he wishes we can find a ‘powerful’ place. I asked him why … His response was so that his father can’t find us … 9/05/99 Isidore told my friend Ellen that his father came to see him and he does not like his father anymore. He said he was praying and that he knows God hears him … that his father will die.”
She has three boys. Her eldest son died in a car accident two-and-a-half years ago; the six-year-old child lives with her, and the 16-year-old with his father. “We were in a shelter for battered women when I got divorced and the child who is now 16 said he could not stay there anymore; the children are used to their own privacy. We were living in a room in the shelter with another family.
“The second time I married Bennett my eldest son was very upset. He said, ‘Mommy, just get rid of this man, don’t let him live with us.’ I was hoping that if I married him, he would stop attacking me.”
The levels of violence have been on an upward curve – in 1976 punching and beatings, in 1982 a few stabs with a knife, in 1987 alleged abduction and multiple stabs with a screwdriver, by 1996 rape, in 1999 alleged rape with a firearm, in 2000 he allegedly shot her friend. Not a single practitioner in the field of domestic violence cannot see where this is headed.
Since September 1982, Ribets has opened eight dockets against Bennett, all of which include multiple charges, all of which have led to fines, suspended sentences or acquittals. Part of Bennett’s advantage is that while he, a well-paid technician, has relied on a lawyer, she has relied on the interest and expertise of state prosecutors. Last April, Marietjie Fourie, a police officer in the office of the Gauteng MEC for safety and security began taking an interest in Ribets’s case; Bennett threatened Fourie’s life, she says.
A security company was contacted twice during the February attack, Ribets says. After Bennett allegedly entered Ribets’s home, hit her over the head with a firearm, shot her friend and locked them in the bedroom, she pressed the alarm for BBR security. Someone came, she says, walked into the home, called “Is anyone there?” and left.
Bennett allegedly shot her friend twice more, and hit her again. After he had apparently left she pressed the panic button again and this time when the phone rang requested police and an ambulance.
A cameraman for Netcare, who sent an ambulance, recalled, “She was confused. Blood was pouring from her head and she had a hand pressed to the wound to try and staunch the flow. The man was in a bad way lying on the floor. He had to be airlifted. It was a very bad situation.”
Two months later she can’t drive because of terrible headaches and she can’t concentrate. “I’ve had enough,” she says. “I want to begin living.”
A system that has always failed her and millions of South African women – every six days in Gauteng a woman is murdered by her partner – may on this occasion take heed.
Detective Sergeant Paul Fern of Florida was so concerned he did what no other police officer in 24 years has done. He began recalling every file, every charge sheet detailing years of abuse against a small, frightened woman. “I want to show a history of violence,” he says.
The National Directorate of Public Prosecutions has tasked an advocate to monitor the case. A representative from the Department of Justice says: “Abusive men think they are above the law, and if you hand an interdict to those with a gun they become more violent. There is a culture of silence in this country. We need better case law on domestic violence.”
The case comes to court again on April 19. Bennett is being charged with two counts of attempted murder, intimidation and the illegal use of a firearm, among other charges. A warrant for his arrest for disobeying the 1997 interdict was issued on March 12.