Pretoria - “I now understand why Louisa left him,” Lulu van der Merwe, 43, said on Friday, a day after she laid a charge of assault against her husband Christo van der Merwe, the biological father of murdered Poppie van der Merwe.
Speaking to the Pretoria News, van der Merwe said she was “lucky to get out alive”.
During Poppie’s murder trial last year, Van der Merwe was by her husband’s side on several occasions but, on the day he watched his child’s killers sentenced, he was alone.
Van der Merwe now claims her reason for this was that she could not appear in court with her face bruised after he allegedly beat her two days before.
“On the day of the sentencing, I told him I could not sit and watch him with the sentencing when I feel he should have been next to Kobus (Kobus Koekemoer, Poppie’s stepfather),” she said.
Poppie’s mother Louisa and Koekemoer were given life sentences for her murder. At the time, Christo van der Merwe said he was glad they had been punished for what they did.
Van der Merwe claimed that when they married two and a half years ago she had told her mother she was marrying her best friend. But his demeanour changed after he lost his job, he become aggressive and abusive.
She said she eventually left him in March and had not had contact with him. During the trial she said she felt sympathy for Louisa who, she said, had told the truth about him. She said it was Koekemoer who hit the child’s head and kicked her but Louisa was also convicted on the doctrine of common purpose.
Koekemoer testified that she fled their home in Westonaria with Poppie and her brother, and took the children to Orania.
The court heard how the community of Orania had failed Poppie and her brother as it was clear they were being abused.
The Pretoria News tried several times to get hold of Christo van der Merwe on Friday to hear his side of the story, but with no luck.