STEVE SWANEPOEL may soon see his two youngest children for the first time in two and a half years. But he won’t allow himself to get excited - because perhaps it’s too good to be true.
“All I want is to hold my children but there have been so many setbacks I no longer dare hope,” he says, his eyes filling with tears.
More than two years ago his ex-wife took Stephen (6) and Isabelle (7) to France, contravening South African law and ignoring a French high court order to return them to SA.
Steve, a Cape Town businessman, has been told he can collect the kids but no one has been able to tell him where they and his ex are. He fears the close bond he once had with them might have been destroyed. “They may not even speak English any more.”
He says he realised soon after their marriage that the charming woman he’d fallen in love with while working in England had a dark side.
Charlotte de Montby Isenschmid is of aristocratic descent, has Swiss and French passports and is thought to be close to French politicians. Initially she got on well with his other kids - he has custody of an 11-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter from a previous marriage - but things changed when she fell pregnant, he says.
The more conflict there was in their marriage the more she took it out on his children.
Steve could have had Charlotte arrested by Interpol for child abduction; he could also have her arrested when she arrives in South Africa but for the children’s sake he won’t resort to that. “I don’t want to have to explain to them one day why their mother disappeared from their lives in this way.
“Some days it feels like checkmate especially now that we’re dealing with the red tape. I’ve been so desperate I’ve thought if I could spend just two weeks with all my children again I’d be ready to die.”
