The pain and panic of a moment’s madness can eventually give way to a time of reflection and contemplation. However, true healing can only begin when transgressions are remedied.
Nisa Wagenaar, mother of the young girl whose neck was in the grip of assault and alleged kidnapping accused, Naseem Slamang, is ready to open up on the matter. Wagenaar has been disappointed at the sympathy shown towards the accused, and feels the trauma her daughter has suffered has been overlooked. Originally wanting to shy away from any attention in order to protect her child, the reopening of wounds has mandated otherwise.
Read initial article here: WATCH: Florida restaurant goers prevent deranged man’s attack on young girl
Police investigations meant that Wagenaar’s four-year-old daughter had to retell what she experienced to the investigating officers. “Subsequently, she has been having nightmares and severe separation anxiety to the extent that she cries herself in a frenzy when I’m not with her,” explains the agitated mother. While Wagenaar has been dealing with her daughter’s trauma, Slamang has been preparing for his next court date.
Slamang appeared in the Roodepoort Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, 9 December via teleconference. Standing in the audio-visual room at Krugersdorp Prison where he is being held, the accused could be seen and heard as the court was updated on the case. The assessment report on the child victim is still pending, so the matter has been postponed until 19 February, with Slamang on audio-visual remand.
By the time Slamang next faces the court, it will be over six months since the incident at the restaurant on the corner of Goldman Street and Ninth Avenue. This is little consolation for a distraught mother helping her small child make sense of the incident. “No little girl should be this afraid of the world. He took away her freedom, her joyful, carefree nature and filled it with fear and anxiety at the mere age of four,” rued Wagenaar.
While still seething at the accused and his family, who Wagenaar claims to have been ‘using every possible excuse under the sun’, the owner of the restaurant still gives her hope. “Dishal Sooku is definitely our family hero,” she praised.
Grateful that she and her two daughters left the restaurant without lasting physical damage, she still has the difficult task of answering her four-year-old when she asks, “Why did that man want to hurt and take me?”
