Model boss allegedly proposed to teen

A woman testifying against Joburg model agency boss Dawie De Villiers testified that he had asked her to marry him when she was just 16.

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Johannesburg – A woman testifying against the Johannesburg model agency boss Dawie De Villiers told the High Court sitting in the Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday that he had asked her to marry him, but that her mother had told him she was too young.

“He came to my mother’s house and we had a meal and he insisted to my mother that he wanted to marry me and my mother said I’m too young, but he didn’t stop, he just insisted,” she said.

“I gave him a note with my name and his name and signed it and said that’s the closest we’ll get to a marriage certificate,” she testified.

The woman told the court that De Villiers’s wedding proposal wasn’t a joke, but her note to him was a joke.

De Villiers’s defence advocate Jacques Pienaar then put it to the woman that the marriage proposal was in fact a joke.

“It can’t be a joke because he used to say it on BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) so many times,” she said.

Earlier Pienaar questioned the woman about an incident when De Villiers had allegedly put his hand up her skirt and also kissed her.

Pienaar questioned why she had told a friend to which the woman responded: “She (friend) told me that she thought De Villiers loved her and she also loved him but that she thinks that there’s something between me and him because he is always friendly with me, that is why I told her.”

“Did you like Dawie?” Pienaar asked.

“No,” the woman replied.

Pienaar asked how it had happened that they had ended up in De Villiers’s room.

“I went to put my shoes in his room and he said we must sit on the bed. I did not, I stood there, it was then that he held me on my hips,” she testified.

Pienaar asked the woman what she did when De Villiers held her hips

“I just stood there, I didn’t know what to do.”

Pienaar put it to her that she could have stepped back .

“At that stage I didn’t know what to do,” she replied.

The woman said she and De Villiers were just talking and he said she had a nice body before they lay down on the bed and he brushed her stomach with his hand.

Pienaar put it to the woman that she had previously testified that De Villiers had just held her and never mentioned that he had brushed her stomach.

“It’s exactly the same thing,” she retorted, at which point Judge Cassim Moosa told the woman that Pienaar was trying to understand why she didn’t mention the brushing of her stomach before.

“This happened years ago, I can’t remember everything, it’s just going through my head now,” she replied.

Pienaar put to her that De Villiers would deny the bedroom incident and the allegation that he had kissed her, because he hated smoking and smokers, and she was a smoker.

“I have no reason to lie and I benefit nothing from being here,” the women replied.

When questioned further, the woman said she had not opened a case with the police because she didn’t feel De Villiers had done anything to her, but that there had been many other girls that he did

Pienaar asked her what she meant by saying De Villiers had done nothing to her.

“He kissed me but he didn’t rape me,” she replied.

De Villiers, the founder of Modelling South Africa, is accused of 38 counts, including rape, sexual assault, indecent assault,sexual grooming, possession and accessing of child pornography as well as fraud and theft. The charges date back to 2010.

African News Agency

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