A witness in the sex-crimes trial of two Pretoria advocates was accused in the city’s high court on Wednesday of helping to ”build” a case against the pair.
Social worker Marlene Malan was unable to explain why a claim that Cezanne Visser had asked an 11-year-old girl to touch her then-partner Dirk Prinsloo’s private parts came to light months after the initial complaint.
The allegation was neither contained in a report Malan compiled following an initial interview with the girl, nor in either of their statements to the police.
”I suggest to you that it was not mentioned because a case was built up against [the pair], that more and more allegations came to the fore that did not exist from the start,” Philip Loubser argued for Prinsloo.
”It sounds to me that as time moved on, more and more wool was added to the story — it became more and more serious,” he said in cross-examination.
Malan admitted the claim was added only later to the report she had compiled based on her interview with the girl. She conceded the allegation was the most serious of those levelled by the girl against the couple.
The girl, a resident of a children’s home who spent a weekend with the pair in February 2002, claimed she had been shown ”ugly” videos, that Visser and Prinsloo engaged in intimate acts in front of her, and that she was asked to look at pornographic magazines and move about naked.
She also claimed Visser had swum naked in front of her, and showed her a tattoo of Prinsloo’s first name on her private parts.
These allegations made the claim about being asked to touch Prinsloo’s private parts look like ”child’s play”, Loubser contended.
Malan’s interview with the girl took place in March 2002. Her statement to the police was made in January the following year, a month after the couple’s arrest.
She added the part about Prinsloo’s private parts after having been approached by the police, and after a follow-up interview with the girl to double-check the information, Malan testified.
She could not recall when the girl first made the allegation, or whether she had merely forgotten to include it in her initial report.
Asked whether it was indeed the girl who had made the allegation to her, Malan said: ”I am going to answer ‘yes’.”
”I was so overwhelmed with information that I could have let that slip,” she told the court.
”Can one accept that [the girl] never said that to you?” Lourens asked.
”I cannot agree,” Malan replied.
Earlier, Prinsloo was denied leave by Judge Essop Patel to question the integrity of the girl, and that of another who was 15 at the time when she was allegedly subjected to similar acts by the couple.
The 15-year-old also spent a weekend with the pair in 2002.
Prinsloo sought permission to cross-examine Malan on the backgrounds of the two girls, and for access to records kept on them by the children’s home where they lived.
The information sought was likely to confirm that the girls had a propensity for lying, Loubser argued.
He claimed Prinsloo had information that the 11-year-old had previously made similar allegations of ”sexual misbehaviour” against other people.
These were never investigated, leading one to conclude that the girl was not believed at the time, he said.
Loubser said the girls lied in their witness statements and pointed out that they were single witnesses — meaning it was their word against that of the accused.
A history of untruthfulness would, therefore, be relevant.
Patel accused Prinsloo of having embarked on ”a disguised form of a fishing expedition” and said cross-examination could not be abused to strip away the dignity of sex crime complainants in court.
He denied the application, saying the court was the upper guardian of all children.
Prinsloo faces 16 charges and Visser 15 in relation to alleged sexual violations of women and girls.
Cross-examination of Malan is to continue on Thursday. — Sapa