The case of 'Advocate Barbie' and her lack of remorse

Pinky Khoabane: The world has its fair share of scum parading in plain clothes, and then there are sleazeballs of the likes of Cezanne Visser, otherwise known as Advocate Barbie.

Why this woman thinks she ought to still be outside prison after the litany of sexual abuses she had inflicted on her young and often underage victims is beyond me.

After subjecting us to an orgy of sordid details about her sex life, in a trial that has gone on for close to eight years, you would have thought that she would accept her fate and quietly go off to serve her sentence.

But no, not this child molester.

In her latest bid to stay out of prison, she appealed her seven-year jail sentence this week, on the grounds that she was a victim of battered woman syndrome.

She would like us to believe that, like a woman who can't get out of an abusive relationship, she too could not leave her live-in-lover, former advocate Dirk Prinsloo, despite knowing full well that what she was doing was wrong and unlawful.

In case you have been so revolted by this case, as I have been, and have chosen to forget its finer details, Visser, together with Prinsloo, sexually molested a host of young girls and women over time.

In a cocktail of sex and lies that more resembles a pornographic movie than real life, these two preyed on young girls from orphanages whom they would pick up for weekends - and then severely abuse. The couple lied to the orphanages, pretending to be married in order to get access to the children. They would drug them, sexually molest them (details of which are too gross to repeat here) and then photograph them and use the images in pornographic movies.

Visser was sentenced in February to seven years in jail after being convicted on 11 sex charges - which included indecently assaulting two teenage girls and soliciting a teenager to commit indecent acts; indecently assaulting two women and benefiting from the indecent assault of a third; defrauding a children's home and developing child pornography.

Most of her victims were between 11 and 14 at the time the crimes occurred.

Visser was denied leave to appeal against this sentence but was given bail pending the outcome of her application to the Supreme Court of Appeal for leave to appeal.

In court papers filed this week, she argues that she had had low self-esteem and was naïve, making her a sitting duck for the manipulative Prinsloo. She claims that her "intelligence" (she apparently has two law degrees) has had no bearing on this syndrome.

"For a woman, my body symbolised my entire personality," she is reported to have said in her appeal papers.

Right. That will explain why she transformed her body with those gigantic fake boobs which at some point in the trial became the focal point, and also produced raunchy videos which she posted on the Internet for the world to see.

That aside, you would have thought that Visser would show a bit of shame, if not for the sake of her victims, then for her mother at least.

In sentencing Visser, Acting Judge Chris Eksteen had said the lives of the victims had been "ripped to shreds". And indeed, barely two weeks ago, one of Visser's victims, Jeannine du Plessis, 21, ended her life with the medication that was supposed to help her end her drug addiction.

Du Plessis was found dead underneath a tree with a rope around her neck.

Clearly, the intention had been to hang herself, but the overdose killed her first.

Du Plessis had become a heroin addict and a seriously troubled mother who, as a child, had moved from one orphanage to another. She also tested positive for HIV according to News24.Com.

Her mother, Marie du Plessis, put the blame squarely at the door of Visser and Prinsloo, saying the death was a direct result of what the two had done to her daughter.

It is Du Plessis that Barbie was found to have indecently assaulted, and that was only because rape could not be conclusively proved to have occurred. This, on the young woman's 15th birthday.

This is but one of the heart-wrenching stories that have come out of this sordid saga of a woman whom the media had chosen to call Barbie, in sharp contrast to the pleasure that the real Barbie doll has given to so many young girls.

Her victims are many: some are known, having appeared in court during the trial - but there are those whose nude pictures which were found in the possession of Visser have not yet told their stories.