News24.com | Sexual assault trial: State's case suffers setback as four charges withdrawn against Willem Breytenbach

Willem Breytenbach seen outside the Cape Town Regional Court.

• Four charges in the sexual assault case against former Media24 employee and school teacher Willem Breytenbach have been withdrawn.
• His lawyer felt that they could not prepare a defence without specific dates of the alleged offences. 
• They plan to submit representations to the National Prosecuting Authority on the remaining charges.

Four charges against teacher and former Media24 employee manager Willem Breytenbach were provisionally withdrawn in the Cape Town Regional Court on Thursday. 

This was after his defence lawyer asked the State for more details on some of the charges and argued that the timeframes the complainants provided in their allegations were too vague for him to prepare an adequate defence.

The men were teenagers at the time of the alleged offences. Some have not been able to remember exact dates.

Breytenbach was arrested in December 2019 after the My Only Story podcast by writer Deon Wiggett was aired.

In it, he faced suppressed memories from his teenage years and launched his own investigation into what had happened.

Other men came forward too and reported their allegations to the police, but a trial date is still nowhere in sight almost three and a half years later.

This is due to a combination of Covid-19 pandemic delays, the submission of representations, requests for more particulars and a change of prosecutor.

The latest blow to the State's case will be accompanied by another set of representations from Breytenbach on the remaining charges. 

The matter was postponed to 14 June for that process.

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