Johannesburg - A protection order failed her, as did the police.
This was the testimony of acid burn victim Ines Antonio, who was testifying against her former boyfriend Jan Pieterse, 45, who is on trial on two counts of attempted murder in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court.
Antonio, 25, said that months before the acid attack, Pieterse had been following her to and from school, stalking her all the time.
“I had a protection order, because he had attacked me and my daughter several times in the past. There are many cases open at the Norwood police station, but they never arrested him.
“Every time they tried, he told them he is disabled (his one leg is slightly shorter than the other) and that it was I who had attacked him, and they believed him every time,” she said.
“So he ignored the order and continued following me all over. Every time I asked the police to help, they did nothing. He said no one would do anything to him and he would get away with it, like Oscar Pistorius.
“He said this case would be bigger than that one,” she added.
Antonio broke down several times during cross-examination by the defence.
Pieterse has previously told the court that Antonio agreed to meet him on the day of the attack so he could give their four-year old child a cellphone, and that she attacked him.
He said he was sitting on the side of his boot and she went for him and that, in self-defence, he reached into his boot for something to protect himself and found a small can containing acid, which he threw at her.
Antonio testified on Tuesday that, at the time, he was sending her up to 60 SMSes a day.
“I wanted him to stay away from me. He had another girlfriend, so I don’t know why he wanted to keep calling me. He told me he wanted a coloured or white girlfriend and didn’t want a k****r like me. Why did he throw acid at me after three years that we weren’t together?” she asked, sobbing.
Several times, magistrate Albertus Roux asked her if she wanted time to compose herself, but she said she was okay.
Pieterse taunted her every day when she was in hospital, saying, on SMSes: “Hahaha, you look like a black widow spider.” He had threatened to climb over the hospital walls to kill her, she said.
When Roux asked her why she didn’t just ignore the SMSes, she broke down again, saying she was alone in hospital with no protection and she wanted to find out where he was because the police were doing nothing to find him. “I wanted to go and find him myself, I was so angry,” she said.
Roux remarked that after reading all the messages, he found that Pieterse was swinging between extreme love and hate for the victim.
After continued questioning about the role of her new boyfriend, Legal Aid attorney AJ Greyling tried to get her to admit that this man had threatened Pieterse, a fact which Antonio denied. “Jannie threatened both of us,” she said.
The case was postponed to September 4.
The Star