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A woman appeared in the Mankweng Magistrate's Court for allegedly killing her husband.

The past of a prominent and well-known figure in cycling circles may, after more than a decade, catch up with him. Next month he will have to defend a R3 million damages claim against him from a woman who claims he ruined her life by sexually exploiting her since she was a child.

The emotional baggage had become too much for the 31-year-old woman who is now struggling to cope with life.

She believes her former lover – 19 years older than her and who allegedly “groomed” her into a sexual relationship since she was a child – is responsible for the emotional trauma she is suffering and for which she will have to get help.

Although she had not seen him for years, she wants him to pay for what she claims he has done to her. Not only by way of money, but by taking responsibility for his deeds.

A psychologist who assessed the woman says she will have to undergo in-depth psychotherapy to understand her anger and grief at her lost adolescent years and to come to terms with what happened.

It is claimed that the older man totally isolated her as a teenager, resulting in her having hardly any friends. As she had to hide the relationship, she emotionally became dependent on him.

One of her lawyers, Louise du Plessis, said the case, which is due to start on March 5 in the Johannesburg High Court, is about abuse of an adult’s position of power, which resulted in a young girl being deprived of emotionally developing as teenagers should to build skills to later cope with life.

While the two finally broke up in 2003, it was only a few years later, as everything continued to go wrong in her life, that the woman realised the older man was the cause of it all.

“I got to the point where I could not go further. I wanted him to realise what he had done to me and to take responsibility.

“It is not just about the money, I want him to admit what he had done and I want to find closure.

“He now has two children and I often wonder how he would have felt if this happened to his children.

“These past few years were very difficult for me. I know the court case will not be easy, but it will come as a relief to me,” she told the Pretoria News on Sunday.

The two met when she was 11 and her mother dated the cyclist’s brother, whom she later married. The child at the time became friends with him and his wife and cycled with him.

He later made continuous sexual advances towards her, she said, although she was an underdeveloped and naive teenager.

She said he used to fetch her from school and told her he wanted to “make love to her”.

When she was 14 she eventually gave in and they had a sexual relationship, which she said she saw as a “formality that he enjoyed”.

Her secret relationship with him developed to such a point that she no longer saw her own friends and didn’t go to her matric dance as he objected to it.

The woman told a psychologist that she was alienated from the outside world, and totally dependent on him. He, meanwhile, divorced his wife and the two, after she finished school, moved in together.

However, he openly had other relationships and she claimed he gave her a sexually transmitted disease.

When she turned 23 she could no longer cope with the relationship and broke it off.

The cyclist denied any wrongdoing and stated in court papers their sexual relationship only started when she was 17. He accused her of flirting with him at the time, causing his marriage to break up. He accused her of having other relationships, hence the sexual disease.

The court will be presented with a psychological report setting out the consequences of a teenager’s sexual relationship with a much older person in a position of authority and how it affects such children. - Pretoria News