Police officers around the country were on the lookout for a seedy looking sexual predator who had been snatching young girls and when they encountered this couple that looked completely normal, they were never given a second glance.
INVESTIGATING OFFICER
The infamous couple who were behind the spree of kidnappings of young girls
CORNELIUS Gerhardus van Rooyen and his girlfriend, Francina Joey Haarhoff, will stand in the annals of South African history — their spree of child kidnappings having torn families apart.
The memory of the South African paedophile and the killer couple he commanded lives on. In concert with Haarhoff, they are thought to have abducted and murdered at least five young girls between 1988 and 1989.
A sixth girl had escaped.
According to dated reports, Van Rooyen’s son Flippie alleged that the girls had been killed as part of satanic rituals and that their bodies had been burnt with acid, or that they had been taken to the Middle East. He also alleged that three former National Party (NP) ministers had been involved in a child smuggling network with his father, which involved selling girls for cash. However, no grounds were found for these claims.CORNELIUS Gerhardus van Rooyen and his girlfriend, Francina Joey Haarhoff, will stand in the annals of South African history — their spree of child kidnappings having torn families apart.
The memory of the South African paedophile and the killer couple he commanded lives on. In concert with Haarhoff, they are thought to have abducted and murdered at least five young girls between 1988 and 1989.
Recalling the day Fiona went missing
THE vanishing of Fiona Harvey left an indelible mark on Clarendon Primary School with notes on her disappearance etched into log books detailing the school’s history.
Its halls were the epicentre of the search effort where the footsteps of hundreds of police and volunteers were co-ordinated.
Witness reader Estelle Hundly said on two occasions Van Rooyen had offered her a lift in the late 80s as she waited to board a bus near her Blackridge home into town.
“I always used to walk to the tearoom on the Sweetwaters Road and then go from there into town to do my shopping. Twice when I was standing and waiting for the bus to collect me, this man came in his white bakkie and tried to get me to take a lift with him,” the 90-year-old said. READ MORE
A close encounter with killer
The day Maritzburg’s social psyche changed forever
STEPHANIE SAVILLE
THE day we heard Fiona Harvey had disappeared, was the day the mothers of Pietermaritzburg brought their children inside and kept a constant anxious vigil over them.
Many will remember with happy nostalgia how freely Pietermaritzburg children roamed the streets before then. Our children walked to school, they went on errands to the corner cafés and walked or rode their bikes to play with their neighbourhood friends.
They caught buses with their pals and went into town with a cavalier, happy independence that made the city such a great place to grow up in then.
That all changed in the wake of Fiona going missing. We identified our children with her. She was one of them.
The social psyche of the city shifted dramatically when her disappearance hit the headlines. We started dropping our children at school in our cars. We walked them to their friends’ homes or watched them going down the road from the garden gate, making them wave to us when they were safely there. We took responsibility for our children’s neighbourhood friends too and walked them home after a playdate.
We all agonised over Fiona’s whereabouts, well aware that any of us could have been in her parents’ shoes. We wanted her found because an explanation and arrest would mean we would not need to fear for our own children any more, and fear we did. There was only one topic of conversation at any gathering in the city for those first months. Prayer groups prayed, motorcyclists hit the town trails searching for her while others walked through the forest belt calling her name. Psychics had their theories, adamant they knew where she was. They didn’t.
Amidst the despair and futility, everyone wanted to do something to try and help find Fiona. We kept hoping.
It seems so crass now, but many parents used the case of the missing girls as a threat to their own children to stay in the yard or to walk in groups and stick to arrangements they had made with them.
Tragically, Fiona is not the only child to go missing in Pietermaritzburg. There are many more that have not hit the headlines in the way she did back in 1988 and subsequently with the links to Gert van Rooyen. The tragedy is that in all likelihood many more children will go missing, with some being found and others not. But Fiona Harvey, and the effect she had on making parents hug their children that little bit closer each night at bedtime, will always be remembered and revered in the minds of city residents at the time.
A lingering uncertainty
FIONA Harvey’s family home, set in a leafy grove in one of Pietermaritzburg’s premier suburbs, stands as a monument today that the fabric of the city was torn.
The front garden where Fiona would gambol with her dogs is bathed in morning sunlight.
A precast concrete wall stands stark against the lush green verge, and an iron gate that she would have walked through on her last jaunt to the café stands tilted on a hinge.
Long after the family moved away from their home of 30 years, the presence of the trauma that played out still lingers.
Sarah Carlisle bought the house from the Harvey family in 2003.
