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Joost
| Date: |
08 November 2009 07:00 |
| Producer: |
Susan Purèn
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| Presenter: |
Devi Sankaree Govender
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
Joost van der Westhuizen and Amor Vittone were the ultimate celebrity couple - darlings of the media, living the high life that came with lucrative sponsorships and appearance money.
He, a former Springbok rugby captain and one of the heroes of the winning 1995 World Cup team and she the former Lotto girl turned performer and singer.
But in the past nine months they were knocked off their pedestals by a sex-and-drugs video featuring Joost.
This past week, yet another chapter was written.
The headlines said it all: Joost was indeed the man in the video and had finally confessed.
Devi Sankaree Govender (Carte Blanche presenter): 'He did so in the last chapter of his book, 'Joost the Man in the Mirror'. It's marketed as: The truth and nothing but the truth, guaranteed to blow your socks off.'
Devi: 'The book sold out in less than a day. Was it your good marketing?'
Joost van der Westhuizen: 'No. I don't know what it was. All I know is that there must be a better way to make money than to put myself through this humiliation.'
Devi: 'Why the lies?'
Joost: 'To protect myself. I was scared.'
[Beeld headline] 'Amor: 'Ek staan by my Joost.''
Amor Vittone stood by her man.
Devi: 'How did it feel, like then, every time that Amor was interviewed by the newspapers, by the press?'
Joost: 'You know what the problem is ... If I had told her back then it would have been okay, but now it's worse. To look her in the eye now - it's worse. To see how she defended me. And she stood by the marriage saying that she will stand by me whether through better or worse. That's why I went to her the last week of July, the first week of August - roundabout there - and I said, 'Listen, I need to talk to you. I just want to say it's me in the video. There is no way out - I can't lie anymore.''
Last Tuesday, the stress and humiliation caught up with Amor during a radio interview.
[Jacaranda 94.2] Amor Vittone: 'I had backed him; I had supported him throughout the whole ordeal, so I just really feel like I've been let down. What do you do when your child tells you, 'Mommy, stop crying.' That's really, really hard. It's one of those things you have to deal with.'
The sleazy saga began when Rapport newspaper and Heat Magazine published pictures of a man resembling Joost, snorting a substance and cavorting with a scantily clad female.
The grainy visuals were from a video camera hidden in a handbag. Heat Magazine first invited the media to a private viewing and then posted the evidence on their website for all to see.
Devi: 'Opinions were divided. Was it Joost in the video or was it his double as he was telling the world?'
Melinda Shaw (Editor in Chief: Heat Magazine): 'You can see it's him, you can hear it's him.'
Melinda Shaw, Editor in Chief of Heat Magazine, says she thought Joost was going to confess the very next day.
Melinda: '...and then he didn't.'
The media would not let go and pressure was on Joost to prove his innocence.
Joost: 'On Sunday afternoon I know the Afrikaans press will phone me for interviews. And on Wednesday afternoon it's between four and five and six. And I knew Huisgenoot were going to call for comments. Tuesday's was Heat Magazine. Saturday afternoon's was Rapport. So when that time came closer, I started to freak out [thinking], 'My phone is going to ring.' And I know, I know it's going to ring. Everything was sitting... everything was pushing up, haunting me. I couldn't sleep. I think that's just why I had a fit, because for two, three months I never slept.'
Joost then enlisted the services of private investigator Mike Bolhuis.
Mike Bolhuis (Security specialist): ' I clearly instructed him to tell his wife and then deal with the media. I disagreed that it would go on the basis of it wasn't him in the video.'
Devi: 'So what exactly did he want you to do?'
Mike: 'He wanted us to build a police case, which we did. I involved several policemen. And build a case against the people that made the video - which we did. However, once the case was completed, investigated, all the evidence [were] there, he refused that we expose it. Because how do you open a case if you don't have a complainant? He has to say, 'It's been me in the video, and I'm making a case against these people that filmed me without my permission.''
And that's what Joost wasn't prepared to do.
Devi: 'The country didn't have to wait long for the next sordid titbit, this time from the mysterious woman in the video who came forward to tell her side of the story.'
Marelize van Emmenis made the video recording in 2006. She said she and Joost had used the drug CAT each time they met and that secret recordings were made of two of the encounters. However, only one tape was useable.
Joost: 'The first time wasn't sexually at all. The first time I still had my clothes on, the second time is the one you saw.'
Devi: 'I couldn't understand how she was so prepared with a camera?'
Joost: 'Because I flirted with her on SMS, and the boyfriend became jealous. So they set this up.'
Soon the blackmailing started.
Joost: 'He just said to me, 'Listen, half a million, I've got this tape. And then he went at one stage and said, 'I know where you live; I know where your wife does shows'; I know where your kids are.' He was starting to threaten my family with security. I just freaked out - I freaked out completely, I didn't know how to handle this. He said to me, 'Don't go to the cops.' And I was in a horrible state.'
Devi: 'What did you do?'
Joost : 'Because he said to me, 'Don't go to the police.' I went to a guy I thought was a friend. He was in the police... I'm not going to mention his name.'
Joost and his friend set up a meeting with the blackmailer at the Centurion Golf Estate.
They told him the money demanded would be in Joost's car.
But when the blackmailer arrived, several men overpowered him.
One of them, it's alleged, was former CCB operative, Calla Botha.
Botha, also a former rugby player, had been a suspect in the murder of anti-apartheid activist Dr David Webster in the late '80s.
Botha this week denied any knowledge of the 2006 incident.
The blackmail is mentioned in the book, but not the fact that it revolved around the sex video.
Devi: 'And the money that you left in the car?'
Joost: 'There wasn't any money in the car. It was just an empty suitcase.'
Devi: 'And that was it? You never heard from them again?'
Joost: 'No.'
Devi: 'Over and out.'
Joost: 'No, I never heard from them again. August last year, 2008, August I fetched the kids from school. Amor sat next to me. I got a call again and the guy said, 'Your problems are going to start soon.''
Eight months later the video resurfaced and the rest is history.
Mike Bolhuis, in the meantime, was putting out fires on all sides.
But did he lie to the media?
Mike: 'I did not lie to the media, I just did not disclose. When I had questions asked to me I was evasive. I would say, 'This is a matter that Joost needs to deal with; he needs to speak.''
Devi: 'Then where did the story of the polygraph test come up? You were quoted directly in various newspapers saying that you conducted a polygraph test.'
Mike: 'The polygraph test wasn't conducted by me - I sent him to an agency who I asked to be compassionate and assist him. What happened there is a matter between him and them.'
Joost: 'So he strapped me up and everything.'
Devi: 'You passed that test?'
Joost: 'Uh, no, I couldn't. There was no way I was going to pass that test.'
Devi: 'You failed the test?'
Joost: 'Of course I failed the test - I lied.'
Mike's investigation also included obtaining the cellphone records of several people, among them Calla Botha and Melinda Shaw.
Mike: 'It can possibly be alleged, but if it is part of the investigation... if we find people are deliberately out there to harm somebody or if a crime [was] possibly committed, then we will draw those cellphone lines if we can.'
This invasion of privacy has incensed Melinda Shaw.
Melinda: 'I'll have to see what action I take because this is criminal, I have a civil case against them for invasion of privacy which is quite ironic given that's what they've been saying all along. And also, it's criminal, so there's criminal prosecution.'
But despite Bolhuis's best efforts to exonerate Joost, there were more skeletons in the closet.
Devi: 'Joost was in the eye of the storm and it got worse. A woman came forward saying that she has had an on-off relationship with Joost while he was married to Amor.'
She didn't want her identity revealed, but speculation was rife that it was former Springbok high jumper, Charmaine Gale-Weavers.
Devi: ' You don't speak at all of your liaison with Charmaine Gale-Weavers in the book?'
Joost: 'I didn't feel the need to put it down in the book. I'll tell you why. I lied to the public regarding the video, and that's why I put it in the book. And I acknowledged to the public, I said, ' Listen, I am sorry, I lied.' The rest, I believe, is personal.'
But on Friday, Charmaine went public, saying that when asked on occasion to lie to Amor, she had done so to protect Joost.
Devi: 'Charmaine has made it very clear that you phoned her in August and said to her that if Amor were to call her that she must please say that you haven't been linked.'
Joost: 'That's why I said I'm not going to comment. I'm not going to go into a media frenzy and sell newspapers again. I'm not going to. I want to know why Joost van der Westhuizen must go out and say sorry to every single thing he did wrong in his past. I just want to move forward.'
Devi: 'So where to from here now, Joost? What happens?'
Joost: 'Where to from here is to work on my relationship with my wife, my family, especially my kids - two angels - umm, to fix my life.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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