When Lizaan Farmer leapt to her death from his moving bakkie, alleged “Sunday rapist” Johannes Steyn carried on driving, not once looking back to check if the 14-year-old girl he had kidnapped moments earlier was all right.
All the 36-year-old man said was “I thought we were going to have a threesome”, testified an 18-year-old who was kidnapped at gunpoint along with Lizaan in September 2010.
The two Pretoria girls had been on their way to visit a friend when Steyn allegedly stopped next to them and ordered them to get into his bakkie. It was a Sunday. “He said if we don’t co-operate he will hurt us. Lizaan then opened the door and leapt out,” said the emotional witness, who was 16 at the time of the incident.
She was taken to a secluded area where Steyn raped her, the girl told the Johannesburg High Court.
Also testifying was a then 16- year-old who had been walking home from church when Steyn allegedly abducted her in Carletonville, took her to a secluded area and molested her.
“He took my hand and placed it on his penis. He asked me if I knew what it was… I kept quiet. He said I was the right age to know what it was, asking if I didn’t do biology at school. He asked what terms we used at school and I said ‘penis’. He said ‘lekker’ (nice).”
Her evidence prompted her sister, in the public gallery, to burst into tears.
“For me it feels like it happened just yesterday,” the woman told the court.
But Steyn also had a chance to shed a tear, weeping in the dock as his ex-wife told the court how he had confessed to kidnapping murdered Florida girl Louise de Waal. “He called to say he kidnapped a girl, he’s really sorry and that he’s a monster,” said the woman, her voice cracking.
Like Steyn’s alleged victims, she testified in camera, and Judge Sita Kolbe ordered that her identity be withheld. Asked to explain her ex-husband’s Sunday routine, she said she had been made to believe that Steyn spent four hours on Sundays doing community service at a hospital in Krugersdorp for a previous conviction, which the prosecution has opted not to disclose.
“That’s what he told you?” asked State advocate Carina Coetzee.
“Yes,” the woman responded as her ex-husband, who said carrying a Bible to court gave him courage, wept in the dock.
The woman said she was having lunch with her mother on the day of Lizaan’s kidnapping. Steyn had joined them after his “community service”. He has pleaded not guilty to all 37 counts. - The Star