Jeannine with her 15-month-old daughter, Mecayla.
Marié du Plessis recalls how upset her daughter was when she heard the woman who’d destroyed her life had been sentenced to just seven years in jail.
‘‘My life is a mess and Cézanne Visser won’t even be locked up for seven years, then she’ll go on with her life!’’ Jeannine du Plessis (21) had said angrily.
She was one of the young victims of sex criminals Visser, known as Advocate Barbie, and Dirk Prinsloo, and was the state’s main witness in their trial.
Jeannine was 13 when she was drugged and indecently assaulted by Visser and Prinsloo. The experiences changed her life tragically. She ran away and became self-destructive, turning to a sordid life of sex and drug addiction. And despite several rehabilitation stints she returned to her drug habit, even though she had a baby with an unknown father and had recently started a new relationship that gave her hope.
Just when Jeannine had finally decided to quit drugs and start afresh she took her life. A week after Visser was sentenced she put a rope around her neck and jumped out of a tree, presumably to be free of her grim past.
‘‘I’m bitter; very, very bitter,’’ Marié says. ‘‘Satan appeared in the form of a snake and her name was Cézanne Visser and she came to destroy my daughter’s life. She [Visser] had so many opportunities to come and say she was sorry but she never did. Jeannine had thought she would sit for 20-plus years.’’
Marié and Jeannine’s father, Pieter, console themselves with the thought that their daughter is finally broken free of the demons that haunted her since 2004.
Read the full article in the 18 March edition of YOU.