According to News24, Willem Breytenbach will make his second court appearance on Tuesday, 4 February. He was arrested on charges of indecent assault and sexual abuse on 3 December 2019.
Breytenbach was allegedly apprehended at his psychologist’s practice in Hartenbos near Mossel Bay in the Southern Cape. He appeared in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on 5 December on both charges. He was released for R50 000 bail.
It is reported that more men, claiming to have been raped or sexually abused by former teacher and journalist Willem Breytenbach, have come forward, bringing the total to 41.
According to reports, 17 victims were younger than 16 when Breytenbach allegedly abused them, 7 were younger than 18 and the youngest victim was 12 years old at the time of the alleged incident.
“These alleged incidents took place between 1983 and 2019. Of these alleged victims, eight were pupils at Grey College in Bloemfontein and 11 at Hoërskool Langenhoven in Riversdale, where Breytenbach taught in the late 1980s and early 1990s,” reported News 24.
As stated by reports, nine others said that Breytenbach (55) abused them when they were his employees at Cape Town-based digital marketing firms Lumico and Lightspeed Digital Media between 2014 and 2019.
Informer Deon Wiggett and seven others reportedly came into contact with Breytenbach in their teens while partaking in a school newspaper project Breytenbach organized when he was employed by Media24. According to Wiggett, three more charges were expected to be added to the charge sheet.
In November last year, Wiggett and News24 co-published a series of podcasts called My Only Story, in which Wiggett exposed Breytenbach as an alleged sexual predator, which ultimately led to his arrest. Penguin Random House will publish Wiggett’s book, My Only Story, in September this year.
Reports say that in his book, “Wiggett plans to track Breytenbach’s trail of alleged abuse from Kroonstad, where he grew up, to Bloemfontein, the small towns of Willowmore and Riversdale, and finally to Cape Town, where he allegedly raped Wiggett and other men.”
