Crimes of the parents....

[Charon]

Hi

I posted a trouble magnet earlier, suggesting that parents should be held accountable for the crimes of their children. Here is what I base MO ON:

April 08 2007 at 11:32AM

By Tribune Reporter
January 15 last year (1990) - the day my dad died."

Gerhard's interview with the Sunday Star was published barely a year after his father, notorious paedophile Gert van Rooyen, and his lover, Joey Haarhoff, killed themselves in a bizarre suicide pact relating to the abduction of Odette Boucher, 11, Anne-Mari Wapenaar, 12, and Joan Booysen, 16.

They were also linked to the disappearances of Yolanda Wessels, 13, Fiona Harvey, 12, Joan Horn, 12, and Tracy-Lee Scott-Crossley, 14.

At the time of this interview, Gerhard's stepbrother, Flippie, had been charged with the brutal murder of a Zimbabwean teenager.

A decade later, a court would sentence Gerhard to 15 years for theft and fraud.
This is the cursed legacy of the six Van Rooyen children, who have either found themselves in conflict with the law, or have had to take pains to avoid the public's eye.

The most high-profile child is Flippie, Van Rooyen's youngest son, whose sensational claims about the fate of girls in international child pornography rings, slavery and Satanism rituals have attracted widespread media attention over the past 20 years.

In November 1991, 29-year-old Flippie was sentenced to death for the horrific murder of Naena Ndou, a 15-year-old Zimbabwean girl in June of that year.
After his arrest, the families of the Horn, Scott-Crossley and Boucher girls demanded the police question him again about the fate of the girls.

Flippie admitted to murdering Ndou "accidentally but aggressively" while on military duty in Messina, by beating her with his army rifle and strangling her.

The court heard how he was "like a monster unable to think".

A farm labourer discovered Ndou's mutilated body buried in a shallow grave on the banks of the Limpopo River.

Her private parts had been removed, her womb cut out. Flippie later claimed her hysterectomy and corpse mutilation was "put on" him by someone in the international child pornography ring that he later claimed his father had been involved in.

Van Rooyen's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in May 1993 and he remains in a prison today.

Then, he told the Sunday Independent, three apartheid cabinet ministers were involved in the same paedophile ring that saw his father abduct the girls.

He said his father had confessed to him that he and Haarhoff had kidnapped and sold more than 40 young girls, selling them for money, and that top political officials smuggled them out of the country. He later failed a lie detector test to verify this.

His other claims included that the girls were murdered and buried in sand dunes near Umdloti, that the girls were taken to the Middle East and sold into slavery, and that his father and Haarhoff were murdered.

In January 2001 he was sentenced to a further six years' imprisonment for perjury.

In the same press article, an unnamed older brother described his father as a dominating bully."I had very little contact with him before his death because he was so domineering, but I know nothing about any sexual abuse."

In October 2000 Flippie revealed that Gerhard had told him that Joan Horn died shortly after she was kidnapped and the other girls were alive in the Umhlanga Rocks area.

"Gerhard told me he and his mother took the girls shortly after they were kidnapped to Durban," he said.

In November 2000, Pretoria police arrested Haarhoff's son, 42-year-old Juan, for stabbing his neighbour, Hennie Muller, to death during a fight over the noise of playing children.

This article was originally published on page 2 of Tribune on April 08, 2007

__________________________________________________ _______________

Here goes:

You can ask any South Afrcan over the age of 30 years old who Gert van Rooyen is, and you'll be told that he is the most hated paedophile South Africa has EVER known. Everyone of my generation knows about this man and his mistress and hates the idea that they cheated justice by commited suicide. All this happened more than a decade ago.

Everything resurfaced this year again when bones washed up on a Natal beach after heavy seas and old wounds ruptured.

My opinion is that we are products of our upbringings and that "sins of the fathers will be visited" and that therefore sins of the children can be traced back to their parents. This unforgettable time in my country's history is a speaking example. This peadophile rocked our world and then his son went and surfed the waves his daddy created by commiting an unspeakable sex-murder.

I didn't visit the actual crime scene of his son Flippie van Rooyen, but I saw the crime scene photographs my colleague (crime scene photographer SAPD) took.
Something freaky happened that day: Reenen (my colleague) and I dug through a new pile of pics released by the colour photo lab in order to claim crime scene photographs took by us in order to complete albums which the detectives were waiting for. We opened this particular envelope, shoveled through the prints to see if it looked familiar and suddenly, and instantaniously we were BOTH grossed out by "an odor" present as we viewed the pictures.
Look, this is utterly rediculous and impossible. There is no way in hell that ANY smell could have been emitted by those postcard sized prints, but as I live and breath, I swear that both of us smelled something that could only be described as "decomposition". Yeah, I know that it must have been subconsious since we've been exposed to these sites , smells and scenes for many years. Still, 16 years later, I still find it very freaky.

Look at the article I copied above, and look at the lives of this paedophile's kids. One son is convicted murderer, the other a fraudster and his mistress son a suspected murderer. Now tell me, checking on the profiles of other serial offenders's upbringing, if the homes from where these offenders come does not play a MAJOR part in their actions?

I believe that prevention is better than cure, and that if and when we start hammering the parents of child offenders, careless parents will wake up to reality, and start getting their homes in order before they and their kids goes down the same road.

Yeah, this will open a pandoras box, and yes this is unfair to decent people who learned from the mistakes of offensive parents. If your parents lived unacceptable lives, erred and you learned from that and avoided such behavior, I salute and respect you, and would it be a privilage to know you.

If you come from an upbringing where your example was not favorable, you have made mistakes, and KNOW that you are drawn to the dark side, is it my wish that you seek counciling as soon as possible and that you know that there are people out there who value you and only wishes the best for you. Please act today and get help, for your own sake and the sake of others.

[DigitalDreamKat]

Quote: I believe that prevention is better than cure, and that if and when we start hammering the parents of child offenders, careless parents will wake up to reality, and start getting their homes in order before they and their kids goes down the same road.

Certainly in this case it would be a valid thing to do, and in cases that are similar, but not all murderers, peds, molesters, abusers, etc come from terrible homes.

It would really need to happen on a case by case basis.

Interesting point you make.

[crimelibrary]

This reminds me of the movie Halloween. The one that Rob Zombie just did about how Michael became so crazy. I know that is fiction, but apparently it DOES happen.

[Jules100]

Originally Posted by DigitalDreamKat

Quote: I believe that prevention is better than cure, and that if and when we start hammering the parents of child offenders, careless parents will wake up to reality, and start getting their homes in order before they and their kids goes down the same road.

Certainly in this case it would be a valid thing to do, and in cases that are similar, but not all murderers, peds, molesters, abusers, etc come from terrible homes.

It would really need to happen on a case by case basis.

Interesting point you make.

I agree , it would def have to be done on a case by case basis, like you said not all molesters, abusers etc come from bad homes, just like not all good people come from good homes. This post has definitley given me loads to think about

[grneyes]

While there are criminals that are greatly influenced by their childhoods, I don't think in most cases, that the parents should be held accountable for the crimes their child does. While we try to raise our children to be law abiding citizens, that isn't always going to be the case. No matter what we teach them or how we raise them, we can't control them 100%.


imo....

[Jules100]

Originally Posted by grneyes

While there are criminals that are greatly influenced by their childhoods, I don't think in most cases, that the parents should be held accountable for the crimes their child does. While we try to raise our children to be law abiding citizens, that isn't always going to be the case. No matter what we teach them or how we raise them, we can't control them 100%.


imo....

It is true that whilst most parents do try their best when they are raising their children you can not guarantee what they are going to turn out like- oh i'm jumping back on the fence again