Game over for Hewitt

Published Mar 24, 2015

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Johannesburg - Suellen Sheehan covered her face, sidestepped the gaggle of cameramen outside the court and ran crying into the women’s toilets in the High Court sitting in Palm Ridge.

Moments before this, Judge Bert Bam had found her former tennis coach, Bob Hewitt, guilty of rape.

Judge Bam ruled in an excoriating judgment that the former doubles champion must be punished for his “shrewd and calculated” grooming of young girls for sex.

The emotion in that moment became simply too much for Sheehan to contain.

For three decades, relatives had claimed she was a liar, and her parents had even taken the drastic step of taking the stand against her in Hewitt’s trial.

But even under intense cross-examination, Sheehan had held things together.

Now, in court, Judge Bam found her childhood rape in a Boksburg tennis club parking lot was a terrible truth, and that her parents’ testimony should be ignored.

Hewitt was also convicted on Monday of raping another of his former pupils, Theresa “Twiggy” Tolken, during a trip with her to Sun City in 1980 when she was not yet a teenager.

Three inappropriate letters Hewitt sent to Tolken swung the case. In the letters, which formed the backbone of the State’s case, he described the then 12-year-old as “his love” and wrote about how his “heart fluttered” for her.

In court on her behalf was her cousin Dorianne Anderson, glued to her cellphone throughout proceedings as she messaged the judgment, line by line, to Tolken, who now lives in New Zealand.

By the end of Judge Bam’s judgment, she too looked worn out, but she told The Star she was as elated as her cousin at the outcome.

She was concerned after seeing Sheehan run to the toilets, as the pair had become good friends. Sheehan came back into the court’s hallway, tears gone, a beaming smile in their place.

“I feel vindicated. He taught me as a child that you get every ball back. And thanks to him, today I’m a winner,” she said.

“I hope other victims and survivors out there can take something from this and be as brave as we were, and take their perpetrators to task because they will be believed,” she added.

Teary-eyed again, Sheehan embraced advocate Carina Coetzee, the prosecutor who has become synonymous with serious and high-profile child abuse cases.

Even Coetzee’s usually guarded demeanour vanished as she pumped her fist in the air with her colleague, advocate Stacey Barbaglia, who was on a watching brief for Women and Men Against Child Abuse, the rights organisation monitoring the case.

WMACA representatives were equally joyous as they gathered outside the courtroom, saying the harsh ruling against Hewitt could encourage other victims of abuse to come forward, even if their cases were decades old.

Not in court was the third complainant, who has requested since the start of trial that she not be publicly identified. Hewitt did not rape her, but the court found that the tennis ace had indecently assaulted her during her practices with him in the 1990s.

The judge ruled that he had fondled her breasts and pressed his erect penis into the small of her back on separate occasions.

On one occasion, he told her: “Rape is enjoyable in all cases, and when I do it to you, you must lie down and enjoy it. Otherwise all you’re going to do is get hurt.”

The woman told The Star on the phone that she felt “unshackled”.

She said: “It’s terrible that some people believed we were going after him for money. This was never a civil claim; we wanted criminal charges against him… It’s such a relief that after all these years, someone believed us. To all those people who stood by us, thank you for all your support,” she said.

Hewitt was granted R10 000 bail while he awaits sentencing in the High Court in Pretoria on April 17.

Hewitt a calculating predator

Bob Hewitt took advantage of the love and admiration of his barely teenage tennis students.

In 1981, when Hewitt was already 41, he encouraged an infatuated 12-year-old Theresa “Twiggy” Tolken, pretending to love her back with a hidden agenda to keep her under his influence.

This was key in Judge Bert Bam’s ruling at Hewitt’s rape and sexual assault trial, during which he described the 75-year-old’s paedophile’s modus operandi.

“After having manipulated the girls to get them under his spell, and after having groomed them, and after they had fallen in love with him, the accused proceeded to have intercourse with them without needing their express consent…

“The accused abused the children’s trust in him,” he said.

Throughout his ruling, Hewitt remained stoic and his wife Delaille, who had sat next to him throughout proceedings, stared at a wall as the judgment became even harsher.

The judge said he believed Hewitt had been “calculated” and “shrewd” in planning his crimes, and even during the rape of Suellen Sheehan in his car in a parking lot - a usually public space - he was clever enough to ensure a third party did not discover them.

Despite some of the crimes being committed more than 30 years ago, “time did not erase the crimes”, he added.

“The State’s evidence is overwhelming and unassailable,” the judge said.

Conviction gives hope to others

The conviction of Bob Hewitt for abusing three young girls was a miracle, Germaine Vogel, advocacy manager for Women and Men Against Child Abuse, said on Monday.

“We are hugely relieved and satisfied and elated that for future cases it will set precedents. We went through a stage where we never thought we’d see Bob Hewitt in court. We thought his fame and fortune would get him off,” Vogel said.

The ruling could also provide hope to those in similar situations who had yet to come forward and act against their abusers. -

Sentencing scenarios

the court will have a wide range of options in how it sentences Bob Hewitt, who was convicted of two counts of rape and one of indecent assault on Monday, says Wits law professor Stephen Tuson.

Because the offences were committed between 20 and 30 years ago, the sentences would have to reflect those that a perpetrator would have faced at the time of the offence, he said. This is known as the principal of legality, and is instituted because when a criminal commits an offence, they are usually aware of the possible punishment they face.

Rape convictions from the 1980s and 1990s garnered a wide variety of sentences, from the death penalty to just a few years in prison, Tuson said. In today’s courts, the rape of a minor would normally warrant an immediate life sentence.

When sentencing takes place next month, the court would also have to consider Hewitt’s age, the psychological condition of the complainants and their age at the time of the crimes.

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The Star

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