Modimolle Monster’s email from jail .
Ina Bonnette speaks of her shock after her attacker emailed her from jail asking for a meeting
IT HAD consumed her for the better part of five years but she believed she’d finally come to terms with it. The brutal rape and depraved attack she’d endured at the hands of the so-called Modimolle Monster – and her son’s murder – were in the past and she was well on the road towards recovery. Or so she thought, until something happened to bring the horror rushing back for Ina Bonnette.
The 48-year-old financial adviser had just arrived at her office in Modimolle, Limpopo, after visiting clients in nearby Bela-Bela when she got a phone call from a social worker at Zonderwater prison in Cullinan, northeast of Pretoria – the jail where her ex-husband Johan Kotzé is serving a life sentence for murder, rape, assault and kidnapping.
When the call ended the harrowing events of that day hit her like a cannonball. On her computer screen was an email from Kotzé (56) himself.
“Ina, I’m grateful for the opportunity to write a letter to you with an invitation to speak with me so I can apologise . . .”
This was the first she’d heard from her tormentor since 3 January 2012 – the day he tortured, violated and mutilated her. The day he paid three masked men to rape her and the day he shot her son, Conrad (19), in another room of his rental house where he’d had her tied to a bed.
“I had to read he was extending a hand of friendship – the same hand that had mutilated my body and pulled the trigger, murdering my son,” Ina tells us.
“It was all just ‘I,I, I’ . . . ‘I’m reaching out to you . . .’ ‘I want to . . .’ ‘I . . .’”
It’s three weeks since she received the email containing Kotzé’s letter and Ina is braaiing boerewors for us at a nearby nature reserve.
She’s changed somewhat since we last saw her and her naturally grey hair is cut in a shorter style with purple highlights.
She’s started writing a book about her ordeal and she’s hoping to have it published soon.
But first she has to deal with Kotzé’s request to see her for the first time since he was sentenced in July 2013.
His request is in line with the “victimperpetrator mediation process”. This forms part of the restorative judicial programme, allowing perpetrators to engage with their victims if both parties agree.
“I’m reaching out a hand of peace to you and I’m asking you politely to consider the invitation so we can have a dialogue and each of us can focus on the challenges in our lives and move on,” Kotzé wrote.
Ina smiles cynically. She declined the
offer with the support of her psychologist, Rhona van Niekerk, she says.
Since receiving the letter Ina has experienced renewed trauma, manifesting as sleeplessness, memory loss and disorientation.
“How can he think that I’d be willing to sit opposite him and look him in the eyes after five-and-a-half years?” she says. “There’s no way.”
ALTHOUGH she feels more in control of her life, Ina’s road to recovery is still challenging. Since the attack she’s had multiple operations to her feet and breasts, where she sustained the most serious injuries.
“The worst thing is then I have to take six to eight weeks’ leave, explain it each time – each time it’s a financial knock.”
Each operation caused so much discomfort she eventually decided against any more surgery to her breasts.
Now that she’s changed her hairstyle and has a new, more natural look, people don’t often recognise her when she’s out and about on her own and she likes that.
But they do sometimes recognise her when she’s with her daughter, Angelique (22), who stood by Ina throughout the court case and whose picture often appeared in the media.
“When Angelique is with me, people do a double take. But when I’m alone? No, not really.”
Angelique is sitting next to her mom. After matric she studied to become a personal trainer but for the past two months she’s been working with her mom as an administrative assistant.
Ina is showing her the ropes so she can eventually qualify as a financial adviser too.
“She’s my life, she’s everything to me,” Ina says about her only surviving child.
Angelique and Conrad are Ina’s children from her first marriage. Angelique was in Grade 11 when her brother was murdered and her mother was violently assaulted.
“You have to accept it,” she says of the events that changed her family forever. “But I’m still angry.
“It’s normal for my mom and me to talk about it – almost like having coffee every morning.
“When my mom got the letter I said to her, ‘It doesn’t make sense. Why does he want to fix things now all of a sudden?’ ”
Despite the media dubbing Kotzé the Modimolle Monster, Angelique says she doesn’t see him as a monster. “No, because a monster is big – it has might,” she explains.
“He’s stupid, he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
THE “Monster” swept Ina off her feet when she first met him. “He spoilt me and pretended to get along with my kids and parents.”
She believes it’s hard to spot a narcissist because they’re so good at manipulating and controlling others. Ina and Kotzé were married on 23 October 2010 but within months she’d realised she needed to get away from him.
“Suddenly I had to dress the way he told me to. I had to wear my outfits and hair the way he wanted. I had to report to him from morning to night.
“He was extremely secretive about his whereabouts but he’d take my phone and ask me who this or that [phone contact] was.
“He always had to be in control. He’s a control freak. There’s no other term for it. Because that’s what a narcissist is. He’ll break down your humanity and destroy your identity.” Her message to women who find themselves in a similar situation is, “If you can admit to yourself that you’ve made a mistake you’ve taken the first step. Don’t let someone smother you like that in a marriage or relationship.”
Ina knows her road to recovery isn’t over. “My puzzle still has many missing pieces but I comfort myself with the knowledge that that’s where Jesus’ light shines in and through me.
“He’s using me as his instrument to try to help people who are in pain and are struggling to make a choice.”
But seeing Kotzé again isn’t part of Ina’s puzzle. “The last item on my checklist was to look him in the eye again someday. But then I came to that part of the book I’m writing – 3 January 2012. That’s when I realised I never want to see him again as long as I live.”
‘He was extending a hand of friendship – the same hand that had mutilated me’