Double murder accused Nicolette Lotter believed her domestic worker was practising witchcraft on her, but did not tell a psychologist for fear of being considered crazy, she told the Durban High Court on Tuesday.
This held the possibility of being sent to a mental hospital, “and I was afraid,” she told Judge Shyam Gyanda.
Nicolette, 29, her brother Hardus, 23, and her former boyfriend Mathew Naidoo, 25, stand accused of murdering the sibling's parents Maria Magdalena “Rickie” Lotter, 52, and Johannes Petrus “Johnny” Lotter, 53, in July 2008.
The Lotter siblings claim they were influenced by Naidoo, and have alleged that he told them he was the third son of God and that God wanted their parents dead.
Nicolette testified on Tuesday that she had found dead frogs and chicken parts in the garden.
During a previous hearing, she told the court she was spiritually raped by a tokoloshe and, in trying to get rid of it, ended up in Phoenix where she met Naidoo who said he could help her.
The tokoloshe had left her body the first time they were intimate.
Nicolette told the court her mother sent her to psychologist Professor Lourens Schlebusch for help, but that she had not opened up to him about the domestic worker, telling him only that the woman “had an attitude”.
She felt she should rather have gone to a pastor for help as it was a spiritual matter.
Asked by the judge if she still believed in witchcraft, she said that it was possible and that a lot of people practised it.
She said she stopped seeing Schlebusch after two sessions. She had told her mother that she was “okay”.
The judge asked how, as a university educated person, she could believe in witchcraft when the first thing such a person would do was to say it was “mumbo jumbo” and be sceptical.
She said Naidoo had told her he was going to stay with her at her house in Westville to protect her from witchcraft and that he moved in without her parent's knowledge, sneaking in at night when they were in bed.
She testified that Naidoo had used black magic on her and her brother, and that she believed that he was a prophet who had healed cancer.
He told her he had brain cancer, but would not die he was immortal. “And I believed it.”
After an investigation into anonymous death threats against the family - allegedly made by Naidoo - her mother had shouted at him, telling him he was a liar and a “dark horse”.
As a result of this, Nicolette said she was afraid for the safety of her mother.
She did not know what Naidoo, who was angered by this, would do to her. Nicolette said she moved away for a few weeks.
Naidoo had also used her father's bank card to steal money from an ATM and had been photographed on closed circuit television.
Her father had asked her to see detectives about the matter.
Asked why her father wanted her to see the detectives, Nicolette said she thought he had wanted her and her brother to realise that Naidoo was having a bad influence on them - something she realised only later.
The court heard that her brother held her jointly responsible for his present predicament, his lawyer Roland Parsotham said.
“He is a very bitter and angry man and he is still under medication,” Parsotham said.
Conceding she was partly responsible for her brother's predicament Nicolette said he was not a cold-blooded killer and was not a danger to society. - Sapa