Media personality Stan Katz was not found guilty on two charges of assault against his ex-wife Philippa Sklaar at the Randburg Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday.
Magistrate Stanley Mkhari found that there was a lack of evidence regarding the assault against Sklaar in 2001, after the state chose to close its case.
”She came here for justice, and she got justice,” said Katz after judgement was passed. He is a former Talk Radio 702 chief executive and presenter.
The case was postponed last Thursday to allow prosecutor Vargani Naidoo to locate two doctors and a pathologist regarding whether Sklaar’s injuries occurred during an alleged assault by Katz.
However, Naidoo failed to locate them.
Sklaar was not present during court proceedings as she was on holiday in Greece with her new husband.
A medical report in 2001 indicated that there were no injuries to substantiate Sklaar’s alleged assault.
”The fact that her injuries did not appear proves that the assault which she described simply could not have happened,” said Katz’s advocate, Michael Hellens. ”Sklaar is not telling the truth,” he added.
Hellens also said that Sklaar’s case was a gross and contorted story aimed at embarrassing Katz. ”This was a gross dramatisation of an ordinary argument between two people,” he said.
The arguments had centred on cigar smoking indoors and a dinner that had not been prepared.
The advocate said that testimony given by David Albert (an armed-response security guard who responded to a panic alarm set off by Sklaar) did not match a statement made by Albert in 2001, after the alleged assault on Sklaar.
Albert said he saw Sklaar holding a tissue to a swollen and bleeding lip. He had also seen blood in her mouth, after an argument occurred over the smoking of cigars in the couple’s Morningside home.
His statement at the time did not say so. Albert had said that Sklaar’s clothing had not been ripped, and Sklaar said it was.
”There were also no defence wounds. It is a natural instinct to want to defend yourself,” said Hellens.
Prosecutor Naidoo told the court that Sklaar had not been seeking publicity for her cookbook as it was published in 2003, and ”wasn’t even available in the country”.
Had Sklaar been ”bitter”, as she was described by Hellens, then she would not have come back after seven years to relive and revisit the trauma, said Naidoo. — Sapa