DIRK PRINSLOO, who fled SA in 2005 to escape rape and child pornography charges, now faces imprisonment in Belarus, the central European country where he was arrested as a bank robbery suspect.
And questions are being asked about his choice of Belarus as a hideaway - the country’s sex-trafficking industry is among the world’s 10 biggest.
It’s rumoured the 39-year-old fugitive lived off the profits of sex. It’s said some of the lovers who supported him were probably prostitutes.
It’s not known whether Tatiana, the woman Prinsloo lived with for the past six months and the mother of his one-year-old daughter, is a sex worker. She told police she had no idea he was planning to rob a bank in the street where they lived in the city of Baranovichi. Svetlana, the mother of Prinsloo’s two-year-old son, hasn’t had contact with him for some time.
Prinsloo’s former SA lover, Cézanne Visser (called Advocate Barbie in media headlines), claims he’s obsessed with sex so Belarus may have seemed attractive to him. He frequently and for no apparent reason travelled to Russia and investigators think he could have been involved in the sex industry.
When Prinsloo fled SA he was facing trial with Visser on several charges, among them rape, sexual assault and producing child pornography.
It’s not known what he got up to in the past four years but he must have been desperate on 10 June when he allegedly decided to rob a bank.
Belarus could have been attractive for another reason to a man who, Visser claims, enjoyed bossing women. Compared with their Western counterparts Belarus’ women are unliberated, says a journalist in that country.
“They live for their husbands and very few realise they can stand on their own feet. They expect men to protect them and take care of them. Their submissiveness makes them popular with certain conservative Western men.”
If Prinsloo is convicted and jailed there he’ll have a long time to think about his choice of hideaway.
