JADE WITTEN
Court Reporter
TWO RAVENSMEAD brothers, accused of forcing workers to perform sexual acts on them, have expressed relief after the State provisionally withdrew the case against them.
Brothers Hein, 31, and Enrico van Vuuren, 35, appeared in the Blue Downs Magistrate’s Court yesterday.
Prosecutor Hamley Marquard told the court that numerous attempts to consult the complainants regarding what allegedly happened on April 5 had been unsuccessful.
Initially four workers who alleged that the brothers forced them to perform oral sex on them, and called them racist names.
But in the magistrate’s court yesterday, mention was made of only two men.
The investigating officer had tried to meet the two men to bring them to court to straighten out aspects before the matter went to trial.
But this could not be arranged, forcing the State to provisionally withdraw the charges after consulting with the Director of Public Prosecutions, Marquard said.
Advocate Zirk MacKay, who represented the brothers, had no objection.
After the court proceedings, MacKay said it seemed the complainants had lost interest in the case.
Hein van Vuuren said the truth would emerge, and that their innocence would be proven, whether or not the case went to trial.
His brother
Enrico added that their timber business had been adversely affected by the case because most of their clients were from surrounding areas such as Mfuleni and Happy Valley, near Blue Downs.
“It’s great this has finally come to an end,” he said.
Early in July magistrate Linda van Tonder, who heard the evidence during the brothers’ bail application, said the case was “fabricated”.
“It seems revenge was the only motive, since (the brothers) did not pay the workers,” Van Tonder said at the time.
The brothers had denied the allegations, saying that the workers concocted the story because they did not pay them after the workers had smoked dagga on the premises.