TWO South Africans have learnt this week that they are likely to be heading for lengthy jail terms in the UK after causing permanent injury to their ex-partners.
Sebokeng-born Berlinah Wallace was sentenced to life in the Bristol Crown Court after she was found guilty of throwing sulphuric acid over ex-boyfriend Mark van Dongen, who was from the Netherlands.
The 29-year-old was so badly injured in the attack in September 2015 that he later took his own life. The jury found Wallace had deliberately thrown the acid at Van Dongen, but they found her not guilty of murder or manslaughter.
The court heard Wallace had thrown acid at Van Dongen as he lay in bed. She was laughing at the time, and told him: “If I can’t have you, no one can.”
On Wednesday, Wallace was given the maximum sentence for throwing the acid.
The second South African facing time in jail is Emile Cilliers, who attempted to murder his wife by sabotaging her parachute.
Victoria, an experienced skydiver, survived a 1200m fall after her parachute failed to deploy properly. She suffered a broken pelvis, broken ribs and fractured vertebrae.
On Thursday, he was found guilty of two counts of attempted murder, which he committed while trying to claim her £120000 (R2m) life insurance. He is to be sentenced on June 15 in the Winchester Crown Court.
During the trial, the court heard that Cilliers, who is originally from Ermelo, had twice tried to kill his wife.
He first damaged a gas fitting in their Wiltshire home in the hope that it would cause an explosion.
After this failed, he tampered with her parachute in a toilet cubicle at Netheravon Airfield. He also removed links from her reserve chute, so it would not deploy.
The trial would also reveal how Cilliers was a serial womaniser, who was seeing two women, including his ex-wife, and was a regular at sex clubs.
One of the clubs that police discovered he frequented was a swinger's club. The owner would tell police that Cilliers had a profile on the swinging website Fab Swingers, where he said he was looking for single women and couples aged 18 to 55. He used the tag “Hot For It” and posted naked pictures of himself.
When Victoria finally returned home after two weeks in hospital, she said that her husband, who is a sergeant in the Royal Army Physical Training Corps, told her that he was too busy to care for her.
“I got the impression he did not want me home,” she told the court.
On Tuesday, Van Dongen’s father Kees read to the court his victim impact statement.
He told the court that his son, a recent graduate, had decided to be euthanised because of the pain he was experiencing.
“He said: ‘Dad, I am tired of fighting. I have suffered so much pain, I cannot take any more, please let me go.'”
Kees added that he believed Wallace was a danger to society and he wanted to see her sentenced to life.