Satanic child-porn fraudster is 'ruthless, manipulative'

293 2016.05.26 Leone Steyn had allegedly managed to defraud more than R500 000 in cash and goods from a series of churches, Roodepoort residents and an online psychological counselling service. Picture:Bhekikhaya mabaso

293 2016.05.26 Leone Steyn had allegedly managed to defraud more than R500 000 in cash and goods from a series of churches, Roodepoort residents and an online psychological counselling service. Picture:Bhekikhaya mabaso

Published May 27, 2016

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Johannesburg - Ruthless and inherently unscrupulous. Manipulative. Struggles to tell right from wrong. In desperate need of psychological evaluation.

These were some of the ways Leone Steyn was described by the defence and state in her sentencing proceedings on Thursday.

When she was 17 years old, Steyn laid the groundwork for a more than three year long scam that ultimately netted her R592 000 in cash and goods that she defrauded from churches and an online counselling service.

Using the counselling service, MobieG, Steyn created more than 50 profiles of fictitious children that she claimed had been rescued from a satanic porn ring, and had the service solicit donations from churches across the West Rand.

Sometimes pretending to kill her characters off through suicide to garner sympathy, Steyn also got the company to donate thousands upon thousands to the fake safehouse where the children were supposedly being kept.

After pleading guilty to her bizarre fraud earlier this month, on Thursday the now 23-year-old appeared at the Roodepoort Magistrate’s Court for her sentencing proceedings.

It began with her defence attorney, Quentin van Huÿssteen, arguing that because his client had taken the court into her confidence and confessed, the 15 year minimum prison sentence she faces would not be appropriate.

Her remorsefulness, youthfulness and her status as a first time offender meant that the young woman should be spared the inhumane conditions of an overcrowded prison.

Rather, Van Huÿssteen argued, she should either be given a suspended sentence or placed under house arrest, though in both cases she should be expected to pay back – as agreed – R270 000 over the next five years to the director of MobieG and the complainant, Stephnie Crouse.

Van Huÿssteen called criminologist and psychologist, Professor Anna van der Hover, to explain Steyn’s harsh upbringing.

At 17 years old, she began using drugs, and the court was told of how she had been admitted to a rehabilitation facility recently and had given up her crack cocaine habit for the past two months.

Van der Hover described Steyn as “a good manipulator” based on her keeping up the safehouse hoax for years, and that she had struggled to discern between right and wrong.

Because she felt powerless in her own world, Van der Hover said Steyn regained her power by killing off her fictitious characters. The criminologist also recommended correctional supervision – or house arrest – for Steyn alongside psychological treatment.

Magistrate Andrea Davie asked Van der Hover if Steyn’s conduct could be perceived as “a child being mischievous on the internet”, with the professor insisting this was definitely not the case.

But the extent of the damage Steyn caused became readily apparent in Crouse’s victim impact statement, read into the record by prosecutor Danette van Schalkwyk.

Crouse said that she was “broken” when she found out the children she had spent years trying to save had been a hoax. Each of the four times Steyn convinced counsellors that a child had committed suicide, they felt the “worst trauma a facilitator can experience”.

Crouse explained that as the story of the safehouse spread, parents desperate for children had offered to adopt them.

“To play with the feelings of people hoping for a child is inhumanly cruel,” she said.

MobieG had also gone into severe financial hardships after their reputation was ruined by Steyn’s fraud.

But van Schalkwyk pointed out that even though Crouse had been so hurt by Steyn’s actions, Crouse had forgiven the young woman and didn’t want to see her go to prison.

Magistrate Davie said that she needed time to decide on her sentencing, as the decision was complex and must not be taken lightly, postponing the case to Monday.

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The Star

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