‘My mom is in jail for killing my rapist stepdad’

Her mom was jailed for hiring a hitman to kill the stepdad who’d raped her – now both women are locked in a world of pain and regret

IT FEELS as if she’s trapped in a nightmare, one that never seems to end. As a schoolgirl Mariaan Swart* felt ashamed about what her stepfather, Johan Loots*, was doing to her but was too afraid to speak out – she’d seen what he was like when he was angry. Then one day the man who’d made her life a living hell was gone. He was dead, meaning Mariaan could rest easy in the knowledge he’d never touch her again. But instead of being relieved, all she felt was an overwhelming sense of guilt.

Her stepdad had been murdered and it later emerged that her mother, Susan*, had masterminded his death – she’d done it to protect Mariaan.

Susan had found out about Johan repeatedly raping Mariaan, her youngest daughter, and it pushed her to breaking point.

The case of the mother who’d hired a hitman to kill her husband made frontpage news across South Africa in 2009.

Susan was eventually sentenced to 25 years behind bars – and for her daughter it’s meant years of guilt.

Most of her siblings blame her, Mariaan (27) says. Time and again she’s been told she’s the reason Susan (58) hired someone to murder her stepdad in cold blood in the family home near Westonaria on Gauteng’s West Rand.

More than anything she wishes she could turn back time and go back to that fateful night when a drunken Johan admitted to his wife what he’d done to Mariaan, who was then just 17.

Maybe if she tried really hard she could find the words to calm her mom, to make everything all right again.

Mariaan says she feels so guilt-ridden she finds it hard to face her family.

“I’ve withdrawn from everyone and everything,” she says, her eyes puffy from crying. “It’s a loss you don’t recover from. First the pain of Johan’s abuse and then my rock, my everything, is sent to jail for 25 years.”

But worst of all is Mariaan’s deepening suspicion that her mom also blames her.

“I can’t take it anymore,” she says. “The guilt is weighing me down.”

SHE’S sitting on a wooden chair in the sun clutching a tissue, her face streaked with make-up from all the tears she’s shed. Years of guilt over a murder she had no hand in have broken her, Mariaan says.

“My mom was everything to me,” she says, sobbing. “She still is – even though we haven’t seen each other in two years. We used to be inseparable and did everything together. Maybe it was because I’m the youngest of five children.

“Maybe it was her guilt because I had to grow up in a house where I had to witness my stepfather verbally and physically abusing her and was then later abused myself.”

In 2009 the case sent shockwaves across South Africa. When a respected Gauteng mining foreman was found dead in his home the puzzle pieces quickly fell into place and police discovered his wife had hired a hitman to kill him.

Only later would details emerge of the repeated physical and sexual abuse the seemingly upstanding citizen had dished out to his wife and stepdaughter. And how Susan had eventually decided murder was the only solution.

“I could hardly believe it when my loving mom admitted to me she’d had Johan murdered,” Mariaan recalls. “I’d never have imagined her capable of something like that.”

A court later heard Susan had paid a hitman R6 000, letting him into the house so he could commit the deed. He stabbed Johan 14 times with a knife then shot him before tying Susan to a chair to make it look like a robbery.

“On the evening she was arrested she looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘I had him murdered for you. Remember that . . .’ ” The words continue to haunt Mariaan. “Almost 10 years after my mom’s sentencing I still feel guilty that she’s alone in that jail cell.”

She says for years the guilt has gnawed at her, causing her to become estranged from everyone in her family, including her mom.

“The most pain I’ve ever felt was when I recently read in the newspapers that I’d abandoned my mom, [that] I refuse to see her.”

The tears start to flow again.

“She knows my situation better than anyone. She knows how hard the past few years have been. That I’m unemployed, that my husband is unemployed, and we’re forced to live with my inlaws to survive.

“In the past few months I’ve called her but the last time we spoke there was nothing but blame. I’ve even stopped writing her letters because I don’t receive any replies.”

She pauses as she tries to get a grip on her emotions.

“I can make peace with the pain. But not with the rejection. I hope to have my Mariaan had to endure the pain of being raped by her stepdad, then lost the mom she loved to a 25-year jail sentence. And the guilt has broken her, she tells us. mom back one day. Because that’s what she’ll always be to me – my mom, and I love her.”

SHE’S guilty, Susan tells us. She arranged to have Johan killed and now she’s paying the price – but it’s not true she wants her daughter to shoulder the blame. As she chats to us she shifts to the edge of the wooden bench in the prison’s visitor centre, a deep frown etched into her forehead.

“What I’m most guilty of is allowing my daughter to grow up in a home like that for so many years. That I was never there to protect her. That even fleeing from that monster time and again hadn’t been enough.

“But worst of all: that she feels guilty because I’m in jail – and that someone’s convinced her she’s at fault too.” Susan looks pained. “Mariaan and I have always had an exceptionally close bond,” she says. “She was my baby.” She says she’ll always feel guilty about the abuse her daughter suffered and she resents herself for being so blind.

“She was extremely fearful whenever Johan was at home but I’d always thought it was because of his temper. I’d never have guessed what he’d really been doing to my daughter.”

Susan says since going to jail she’s never spoken to any of her children, including Mariaan, about the murder.

“Maybe that’s what drove a wedge between us. At first I kept quiet because I didn’t want to upset them in the short times I was allowed to see my kids. By the time I realised my silence was exactly what had driven the wedge between us it was too late.

“I was angry because Mariaan hadn’t come to visit me. I felt alone and depressed and abandoned. But I realise the traumatic ripple effect the trauma of the past 10 years must’ve had on her.”

There’s so much Susan wishes she’d done differently.

“Sometimes you say things in [prison] you don’t mean. After weeks in a small cell you become frustrated. And then you alienate those you love the most.”

More than anything she wishes she could take back those words and find a way to help her daughter heal from the years of trauma.

“I sit in this room and I want to tell her to shrug the guilt from her shoulders. That she must know how much her mother loves her. That I’ve failed her and that her mom’s greatest desire is to hug her close and love her.

“And then to tell her, ‘My child, you’re innocent’.”