Rohde ‘anxious but not depressed’
SUSAN Rohde was not suicidal. Her psychologist‚ Jane Newcombe‚ said she was shocked when she initially heard that Susan had hanged herself‚ as her husband, Jason Rohde, claims.
“I’m saying quite categorically that I did not perceive Susan to be suicidal‚” Newcombe said in the Cape Town High Court yesterday.
The naked body of the mother of three was found in the bathroom of her hotel suite last year.
Her multimillionaire husband, Jason, was arrested and charged with murder soon afterwards.
Newcombe told the court Susan had struggled to come to terms with her husband’s affair with Cape Town estate agent Jolene Alterskye. However‚ she did not hate his mistress, she said. Hours before Susan’s body was found‚ Rohde allegedly wrote to Alterskye: “All I can think of is you. “I want to scream. I don’t want anything more.”
Newcombe described Susan as anxious, rather than depressed.
“A depressed person loses hope‚ they believe there is no future,” she said.
“Susan was more on the anxious side than the depressed. She had not given up hope.”
Susan had started seeing Newcombe in June last year after she found out about her husband’s affair with Alterskye, who is employed at the company he had worked for.
The following month, Susan accompanied him to the company’s conference in Stellenbosch.
On the night of July 22‚ two days before Susan was allegedly killed‚ she called Newcombe after an incident at the conference upset her.
She said Susan had accompanied Rohde to the event. While Rohde had objected to her going‚ she was surprised when she was welcomed and included in activities by others when she arrived.
“She said that when she arrived, everyone was warm and welcoming,” Newcombe testified.
“At one point, some of the older women in her group started a discussion [which she participated in] about how women became invisible after 40.
“One of the gentlemen in the group said to Susan she was crazy and that the room had lit up when she came in and that she was the most beautiful woman in the room.”
Newcombe said this distressed Susan, because her husband did not compliment her in such a way.
According to the state’s postmortem report, Susan was strangled to death.
Newcombe said Susan was well integrated in society‚ had friends and that her marriage was not the only thing that gave her life meaning.
“Susan had several protective factors that prevented her from being suicidal‚” she said.
Susan did not believe the affair was the end of a relationship‚ and wanted to work on her marriage.
But at one point Rohde had started becoming distant from her.
Newcombe quoted Susan, reading from notes taken during the sessions, as saying: “He has become quite aggressive about the way he wanted our relationship to go forward.” – TimesLIVE