|
|
Christmas Presents for Victims of Child Abuse
In December 2008 Women and Men Against Child Abuse will again be hosting our annual Christmas Parties, for the children who visit our Kidz Clinics on the East Rand, in Alexandra and Orange Farm. TThe parties are wonderfully festive, with entertainers and a Real Father Christmas who hands out the presents. Each child gets a healthy lunch too, as well as fruit juices and yummy party treats. We cater for, on average, 150 children per clinic.
This is where we need the public’s help:
We would appreciate donations of NEW presents to give to these children, who have suffered tremendously at the hands of their abusers and have sought healing and support from our Kidz Clinics.
Our “clients” are generally aged between 4 and 16, of which ± 75% are female and 25% male.
With your help, we would like to make the small gesture of giving a gift to each child.
We want to let the children know that there are people who care about them!
We were overwhelmed by the generosity of the donations we received last year. We were able to give presents to more than 500 children and still had some left over, which we handed out to underprivileged children in the suburbs surrounding our Clinics.
Toys, games and educational toys would be welcomed for the younger children, and books, cosmetics and accessories would be nice for the teens and “tweenies”.
Is there anyone who will donate some gift packets and/or wrapping paper? Some volunteers to help us wrap would be wonderful too! (We can only pay you with tea and biscuits, but you’ll have fu
Please be so kind as to drop off your presents at our Head Office at 6 June Avenue, Bordeaux, Randburg, before the 20th of November 2008.
If you would like to contribute in another way, perhaps sponsor coldrinks or snacks for the parties, you are welcome to contact us.
Once again, thank you for your incredible kindness and support.
Please contact Wilma on (011) 789-8815 or Wilma@wmaca.org for further information.
WMACA in the news
Click on this link to see the latest on WMACA in the news
Miranda in the news
Click here to see Miranda in the news.
JULY/ AUG 2007
STEVEN SIEBERT MURDER
This very tragic case dominated the media headlines during July and August. It is an excellent illustration the cycle of abuse with which we come into contact daily, and why we initiated the Youth Development Programme, to address the problems directly with juvenile offenders, to keep them from becoming abusers themselves.
Unfortunately the perpetrator in this case has been "falling through the cracks" his entire life, has committed indecent assault* several times before, and finally an innocent child had to pay the ultimate price.
(* WMACA is campaigning to have "indecent assault" classified as rape, in order to secure heavier sentences for perpetrators)
We place extracts from a newspaper article below:
Siebert murder: Oliver 'abused' as a child
'My imaginary friend told me to stay'
Fatima Schroeder
August 02 2007 at 04:28AM |
It was "a spur of the moment" decision for child killer Theunis Olivier, 56, to cross the border into South Africa. Olivier was released as a state psychiatric patient in Zimbabwe in 2000 after he was convicted on a charge of rape and seven charges of indecent assault. He had served only four months.
Less than five years later, he sodomised six-year-old Steven Siebert in Plettenberg Bay before strangling him with a telephone cord. Olivier on Wednesday told the Cape High Court that, days before the murder, he had a feeling that something bad was going to happen.
He decided that he should leave Plettenberg Bay and go to Mossel Bay. But his "second self", whom he called Theo, wanted to remain in Plettenberg Bay for Christmas of 2005. He said Theo was his (imaginary) friend. "Unfortunately, I listened to him and we stayed," he said.
Olivier, who testified in mitigation of his sentence for the kidnapping, indecent assault and murder of Steven, spent most of Wednesday outlining a troubled childhood. He was the second youngest of nine children and his father was an alcoholic, who physically and sexually abused him from birth until he was five years old. "The terrible fear that we children had was beyond any description. The fear was so severe and so terrible, you could actually smell the fear," he said.
After a beating which left him unconscious, Olivier got to know Theo. "I saw him as a friend," he said. Later, a "third self" emerged, which he named Ruuss.
At the age of five, Olivier's father was imprisoned for abusing him and his siblings and his mother abandoned them when she left for South Africa with a man she fell in love with. The children were sent to a boarding school and there Olivier endured further physical and sexual abuse by two teenage boys.
"If ever I thought that the abuse of my father was hell, I think that I was very mistaken compared to what I went through during my first year at boarding school," he said. Olivier said he had attempted to hang himself at the school but that a teacher intervened.
In 1964, Olivier and his brother were adopted by a family and he lived there until he was 21. He changed his name to Chris because "I did not want to associate myself with Theunis". He became effeminate and painted his bedroom pink to match his bedspread and hung floral curtains.
At 10 he started a long-term sexual relationship with a boy a year younger than him. Later he became a satanist and participated in rituals. But he denounced Satan when he was 21. "It is evil. It is evil of the first degree," he said. He denied Satan had anything to do with Steven's murder.
Olivier also said he had been arrested in Ladysmith, where he worked at a Christian ministry, on five charges of indecent assault. But the charges were withdrawn after the prosecutor failed to place the matter on the roll.
"In 1985 I was arrested in Zimbabwe for indecent assault on minors. However, I was not found guilty on grounds of insanity and was made to spend time in psychiatric institutions," he said.
Olivier is due to be sentenced on Friday.
o This article was originally published on page 1 of Pretoria News on August 02, 2007 |
|
