Listening to Gabz FM yesterday on my drive home from work, I happened to land on a program that was exploring increased drug use in Botswana today. I was immediately reminded of the Advocate Barbie case in which I was involved in from 2001 until 2010. In the said case two advocates had allegedly sexually assaulted a number of young adolescents and teenagers among others. The case finally resulted in the conviction of Cezann├® Visser who was sentenced to serve seven years for the eleven charges on which she was convicted. Jeannine du Plessis was one of these victims. Her story highlights the dangers of drug use and abuse, which, ultimately resulted in her untimely death in the Kgalagadi area of Botswana in May 2010. Her story was one that shocked me to the core, and one that haunts me to this day!
Jeannine’s Early Life
Jeannine was only eight years old when she found herself farmed out to her grandmother, by her heroin addicted parents, who during the day, robbed houses in order to support their drug habit. It wasn’t long before her grandmother’s new husband began sexually abusing the little girl. When she plucked up the courage to tell her parents about what was happening to her, they responded by telling her to keep to herself, because the old man knew a lot about their lifestyle and could report them to the police. This would result in them being in serious trouble with the law and possible imprisonment.
Her sister Rouselle, just a year older than Jeannine never complained of sexual abuse, but, the two young girls began running away from home shortly after the abuse began. Despite what most people think, children do not generally runaway from home and never go back. They leave for a few hours, as an experiment (to see how they cope), then they leave for a few days, then weeks, and then months and years. And so it was with the du Plessis girls.
It wasn’t long before Rouselle began to use heroin. Jeannine, on the other hand, began using alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana (dagga) and glue. (These drugs are usually the stepping stones to more serious drug use because they are readily available and reasonably cheap). She was just nine years old when she began prostituting herself on the streets of Sunnyside in Pretoria in South Africa. This little girl would turn a trick for money to go to the movies and buy popcorn. In turn she would use the drugs she could afford to buy in order to cope with the horrors of her daily life.
Adolescent struggles
There was a brief time in her life, just before she turned 14, when Jeannine tried to turn her life around and returned to school. She was doing really well when she met Cezann├® Visser. The Advocate entered her life with promises of upliftment and support. She pretended to take the young girl under her wing. She took her shopping, bought her clothes, took her out to fancy restaurants, with one goal in mind, the sexual exploitation of the girl.
Visser took Jeannine home with her on the weekend of her fourteenth birthday. The young Jeannine had never encountered anything that remotely resembled the opulence of the Advocate couple’s home. She was very excited by the promise of a better life. During her stay she was drugged with Rohypnol (a date rape drug that affects memory) and raped by Dirk Prinsloo, Cezann├® Visser’s lover. She told me that all she remembered of the evening was flashes of light leading her to believe she was photographed and Visser’s fingers penetrating her. The upsetting part of her story is that she would have probably gone along with and participated in whatever they wanted her to do, had they just agreed to pay her a fair price. All she wanted out of the encounter was a cell phone and contract.
Jeannine struggled to reconcile herself with the encounter and often spoke of the deep betrayal that she had felt as a result of Visser’s betrayal. She expected little more than what she got from Dirk Prinsloo saying, “He was just a man doing what men did. It was Cezanne that betrayed me. She was a woman and I expected more from her.”
This event and the ensuing drama resulted in Jeannine giving up on school returning to the streets and becoming heavily addicted to heroin.
Heroin is a highly addictive, relatively inexpensive and readily available opiate. This class of drugs is naturally derived from the flowers of the poppy plant, or synthetic substitutes. Heroin is produced from morphine, a naturally occurring substance that is derived from this seedpod of poppy plants. All opiate abuse, including heroin and many prescription painkillers carry a strong risk of addiction and physical dependence. Heroin is abused by injecting, snorting or smoking it, and all three can cause the same level of addiction as well as serious health problems. Because it is a highly addictive drug, overdose is a real and deadly risk.
Before she passed away, Janine had multiple arrests, for a variety of offenses which included, prostitution, assault, rape, assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, possession of narcotics such as cocaine, marijuana, heroin and crack. The only thing that she really feared in life was being locked up in a cell. The children were terrified of the members of the South African Police Services, who showed them little compassion and treated them roughly to say the least whenever they managed to apprehend them. They became masters at evading the men in blue. The South African courts, frustrated with Jeannine, eventually washed their hands off her, finding that she was almost impossible to control. She regularly missed court dates which only added additional charges of contempt of court to her record. The cycle simply continued for years as the young girl succumbed to a life of prostitution and drugs. With no home, no rules, no parents and little guidance the child’s life spiralled out of control.
Jeannine, at the age of sixteen, fell prey to a Nigerian pimp who operated in Sunnyside. She was ensconced in his home as his girlfriend, while he fed her heroin addiction. He traded drugs and housing for sex and “pimped” her out to support his lifestyle. It was during this time that she contracted the HIV virus which is prevalent in most Congolese and Nigerian refugees in South Africa. The girl was actually surprised that she had contracted the virus. At times her naivety, considering her life experience was incredible. Discovering her HIV status sent Jeannine on a rampage, having unprotected revenge sex with any man who would have her. She felt they all deserved to die for what they had done to her. The irony was that Jeannine preferred to spike or inject her heroin and she may very well have contracted the virus through the use of infected needles. However, when sober she was usually careful to use clean needles.
Every now and then Jeannine would break away, make a bold effort to escape her life, and enter into one rehabilitation centre or another. Her stints in rehab would always fail and she would return to the streets, to her life with no rules. Jeannine was often depressed and would threaten to hang herself in these times. During these times she spoke often of her betrayal by “Advocate Barbie” and how she had ruined her life and destroyed her hope and her trust that fateful weekend years before.
The Last Few Years
At 19 she was pregnant, the father of her baby girl, a son of the leader of the notorious and dangerous Max Motor cycle Gang based in Gauteng. He of course took no responsibility for the child. Jeannine remained relatively clean during the time that she was expecting and the little girl was born clear of HIV despite the fact that a caesarean section was not performed.
Jeannine loved her daughter and was totally devoted to the child. She did everything she could to provide the child with a home. She tried again to overcome her drug addiction and turn her life around. She met a wonderful young civil engineer Johan who offered her a home and a life with him. Then one weekend she went to visit her sister Rouselle and the young mothers made a batch of “dagga cookies” or marijuana cakes. Somehow the baby got hold of the cookies and ingested some of the narcotics. When on her way home, Jeannine stopped at her mother’s house, Marie picked up that the child was high. She rushed the baby to the hospital where they drew blood and determined that the child had ingested copious amounts of marijuana. Jenny’s mother filed an application with the court applying for temporary custody of the baby. Losing her daughter caused Jeannine to once again spiral into depression and resume her heroin use.
Johan did his best to support her during this difficult time. However, when he was offered a contract in Botswana he decided to take it. He was probably starting to understand the extent of Jeannine’s problems. He begged her to go to rehab again and she agreed, only to fail again. Although she continued to live in the home that Johan bought for her, when he left for Botswana, she returned to her life of prostitution behind his back and her heroin spiralled out of control once again.
One evening Jeannine now twenty-one brought home a client who refused to pay her for her services. She stabbed him before he managed to escape. She was frightened that he would report what had happened to the South African Police Service and was terrified that they would come for her on a charge of attempted murder. When Johan called and asked her to visit him in Botswana she jumped at the chance.
The body of Jeannine du Plessis was found on a Sunday morning of 07th March 2010 in the Kgalagadi area in Botswana. She had walked off into the bushveld, carrying a rope, probably determined to end her life by hanging herself as she had so often threatened to do. She however, collapsed at the bottom of the tree she had selected where she succumbed to the overdose she had taken at the outset of her journey! Her body was returned to South Africa where her funeral was attended by her mother, her father, close family and friends. I always hoped that she found some measure of peace in death because this girl had truly experienced a life of hell on earth.
The story of Jeannine life and death is unfortunately illustrative of the lives of many children who enter the world of drug addiction. The prognosis for successful rehabilitation of heroin addicted people is poor at best, with an almost 100% failure rate. Death is an all too common outcome of this very dangerous lifestyle choice. But why?
The Risks Involved Heroin Use
Because Heroin enters the brain very quickly it is particularly addictive. It is estimated that half of the people who experiment with heroin become addicted to the drug. Over time, heroin users develop a tolerance for the drug. This means that greater amounts of the drug are needed to achieve the desired effect.
It is extremely easy to not only become addicted, but to become physically dependent on heroin as well. Physical dependence occurs when the body adapts to the drug’s presence, causing withdrawal. Symptoms of withdrawal include muscle and bone pain, diarrhoea and vomiting, and occur shortly after drug use stops. Chronic heroin users can begin experiencing withdrawal in as little as a few hours.
Heroin is a depressant and suppresses breathing, explaining why using heroin always carries the risk of overdose and death. Also, heroin often has additives that will not dissolve in the bloodstream. This can easily cause a blood clot to form and travel to the lungs, liver, heart or brain, which is instantly fatal.
Should you be interested to read more on Jeannine’s troubled life and the trial of Advocate Barbie you can pick up my book Shattered Lives, The story of Advocate Barbie at Espresso Deli at Mowana Mall in Phakalane.
I am available to assist in the management of cases that involve persons addicted to various illegal substances. Expert Profiling is contactable on Tel: 390 9957 email – [email protected] or [email protected] or on Twitter @LauriePieters.
