Minutes before she was raped next to her six-year-old son, her "kind" rapist untied her sore hands and even massaged them to get the blood circulation going. Then, as a "parting thought", he raped her.
This is the ordeal to which a 35-year-old mother was subjected in the early hours of Tuesday last week, when a gang of robbers broke into her luxury home on a golfing estate close to the Roodeplaat Dam, near Pretoria.
Margot Ludik and her husband Andries, a well-known Pretoria attorney, said they were very lucky to be alive.
"I think they wanted to kill us, but they changed their minds. I think it is because we stayed calm," Andries said.
Continues Below ↓
| 'I could feel his heart pounding' | The couple were woken just after midnight on Tuesday when the lights were switched on in their bedroom and people hovered over them. This was the start of their two-and-a-half-hour ordeal. Their son and five-year-old daughter were asleep in their bedrooms.
"We heard nothing until they were on top of us. The one robber took the cartridge out of his 9mm and pushed it back. He then held it against my head," Andries said.
"The robbers were shouting 'we are going to kill you, you are going to die.'"
Margot said the fear she experienced was something she could not describe. But she decided to remain quiet and not draw attention to herself.
The couple were told to lie face-down, and their hands were tied behind their backs.
| 'It is just crime and violence, and nothing is going to change' | "They kept on asking where the safe and the guns were. I told them I had a paintball gun. I tried to show them where it was, but when I lifted my head to explain, I was hit," Andries said.
He never kept cash in his home, but that day he had R5 000, for which he was very grateful.
Andries said the robber offered to go and fetch his children. He tied the boy up next to his mother on the bed and brought the girl to her father.
Margot said she believed everything was going to be fine when the robber untied her hands, massaged them and then retied them. "I really think it was a parting thought, but he climbed onto me while I was lying tied up. The man was terrified. I could feel his heart pounding."
The family underwent therapy and are doing much better.
They are now on their way to Australia, as they have had enough of this country.
"It is just crime and violence, and nothing is going to change," Andries said.
- This article was originally published on page 2 of The Star on April 07, 2008
|