Deon Wigget — Author, Investigator, Survivor NB: This Podcast comes with a warning it is the authors story of his hunt for a serial peadophile

And once more, it is what's involved. And I've got a special guest for you this time. And I'm going to preface this by saying that he's a special guest. And we're going to be talking about a subject I believe needs talking about a lot more. It's not traditionally what we do on the show, but then I'm not traditionally a traditionalist. So without further ado, my special guest is Dion Weger. Tell Dion, how are you? Hello, David. I'm Will. Thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. Now, Dion has recently published a book called My Only Story. And that sounded great. And then it's followed up by The Hunt for a Serial Pedophile. And reading, just reading the title, my blood ran cold. But we're going to get into this. We're going to dive a bit into the book and everything. But I like to find out a little bit more about my guests. So, Dion, tell me a little bit about yourself. Born, raised, kind of those things. David, I live in Johannesburg now, as I have for most of the past 20 years. But I grew up in Stellenbosch. I went to the Polish gymnasium, where I matriculated in 1997. Then I studied in Stellenbosch. Then I briefly became a journalist when I moved to Joburg in 2001. But I didn't really enjoy it.

So I fell in with a bad crowd in advertising and then spent 18 years being a copywriter. I worked at Fentiliscaris, I worked in London for three years. I had an interesting enough advertising career. But then, yes, and I didn't mean to pre-empt your next question. But all of that kind of was pulled into sharp relief in 2017, when my father died. And it kind of destroyed most of what I thought about my entire place in the world. And it made me rethink things that happened in Stellenbosch, which I now realize I fled from in the beginning of the new century. So essentially, I'm a man of two parts, you can say, in the sense that my life was chugging along at a complicated but seemingly intact place until my father died. And I started thinking back about my youth. And then, yes, from the age of 37 onwards, I'm 41 now. Yes, my past became much more problematic than I had realized. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your past, because this is obviously what led to the book, My Only Story, The Hunt for a Serial Pedophile. Talk to me a bit about this, Dion. I mean, why the book? You know, is it something that you felt, and I'm sure you did, that this needed to be brought to the attention of South Africa and, in fact, the world?

And that's right, David. So anybody who's ever lost somebody who was very, very close to them, like a father, you start rethinking things that happened in your youth. And you think about things that you haven't thought about in many, many years. In my case, I suddenly thought of a man called Willem Breitenberg, who I had no occasion to think of in decades. But he was a very central part of my life because he made it that way. When I was in STEM at 9 or grade 11, I was the editor of my school newspaper. And through the Las Pairs National School newspaper project, I was introduced to this man who took me under his wing and wanted to give me advice and wanted to be like, you know, I mean, this was 1996 and, you know, people could, you know, gay was not really a thing that people were yet. So, you know, here I am, this grade 11 boy, and I meet this older gay man who just became just this role model to me. And of course, that is exactly how sexual grooming works. I had no idea of this at the time. And I had no idea that his plans for me were not to make me a better journalist, but to write me when he could. And he managed that with Greater Plum.

But it's something so hideous and something that so shakes you at the core that in order to keep you safe from this, your brain hides away the memory. It's a form of amnesia, actually, because you literally can't cope with the notion of being raped. So, therefore, you couldn't have been raped. So, therefore, you weren't. And then one day when your entire past fills up for grabs, you start aligning the right insights with the right facts and with the right maturity. And suddenly you realize, wait a moment, I never wanted to be in a sexual relationship with this man twice my age and three times my weight. I was manipulated and groomed into that position. But the child cannot consent to sex. And it is not my fault that I was raped by him.

But then once I realized what had happened and I was shocked that this thing that had happened to me and that I kind of always knew, nonetheless, I had forgotten. So, two things happened at that point. It became important to me to understand what Willem Breitenberg was doing then. So, I mean, this was the beginning of 2018. So, I typed his name into the internet for the first time in two decades, and I could tell that he was still very much doing what he was doing in my time, which is befriending high school boys and turning him into their heroes and then having their way with them. So, I wanted to stop that. I wanted to stop him doing that to other boys. But at the same time, I wanted people to understand how this could even happen. Because David, you and I are regular, healthy people. We don't think about sex with children, because who would want to have sex with a child?

So, there's this whole murky middle world of pedophilia and men who have sex with children that people like us don't understand. However, we do need to understand it because that is how to keep our children safe. That is how to keep these situations from just carrying on and on from year to year to year to year. So, essentially, the point of the book and the podcast before it, the podcast was very much just about catching Willem Breitenberg and that we managed. But the book is much more a way for me to figure out how this happens in the brains of people to prevent other people from being in this situation and to help parents lead situations better and to spot pedophiles better. Because there are all kinds of ways in which you can keep an eye on these people. I mean, you don't need to prove pedophilia. You just need to be able to recognize it so that you can keep children safe. So, that's really, to me, I mean, this is an incredibly long answer, David. But that is essentially what the book is about to me in many ways, is to help people understand this murky world so that they never have to experience it for themselves. Because, you know, to me, Deanna, as I'm speaking to you now, and I mean, you touched on a point there where you said that normal healthy people don't even think about that.

And I think that's part of the problem that, and we have many problems in our society here in South Africa. Let's just get that out there. That's one of the problems, though, is that we don't want to think that stuff like this happens. And the thing that I want to talk about in just a little while when we come back from the break is I want to talk about what kind of a person, I mean, did you figure out what motivated Willem Breitenbach? We need to talk about something like that. And I'd like to dive into that in just a little bit when we come back. This is what's involved. My special guest is Dion Wigget, author of My Only Story, The Hunt for a Serial Pedophile. We'll be back in just a bit. And we're back with Dion Wigget. He is the author of My Only Story, The Hunt for a Serial Pedophile. Even talking about this, even saying that word and knowing this is being broadcast, people are going to go, ah, no, not interested. Don't want to know about this story. And yet it is so important because when we talk about Willem Breitenbach, he wasn't this dark, shady, creepy little character that lived in a cave somewhere. I mean, this man was well known. That's right. Yes, he was. I mean, he spent almost 20 years at Maspars Media 24.

He was a digital entrepreneur. And before that, he was a teacher. He taught for two years at the famous Grey College in Bloemfontein. He was at Neller High School in Bloemfontein before then. Then he was caught by Grey College, you know, molesting a boy there. And Grey College decided that this will never, ever happen again, but only if the boy is in Grey College. So he in the course of five days in August in 1990, which I also trace in the book, the gentleman from Grey College washed their hands off the whole fair and got him moved to Willowmoor, which is this tiny, incredibly depressing town in the East and in the rural, in the interior of the Eastern Cape. And there he carried on doing what he does. Eventually he left Willowmoor for Riversdale, a slightly larger town just down the road in the Western Cape, where he was the house father, the housemaster. And I mean, in the book, I talked to guys from all three schools that were raped by Breitenberg. And that only takes us up to 1995. That's even before my cameo. So, I mean, he was a prominent man in the public eye. And this is very often what you find is these men hide in plain sight because they know that people are not really interested in knowing about pedophilia. They know that people are clueless as to what these plans entail because it just blows your mind that anybody could have a seduction plan for a kid. So very often we talk about very prominent people who hide in plain sight. And we have a terrific amount of problems in South Africa and in the world. And I do also in the book make the point that I don't believe my issues are uniquely bad.

However, and I don't think the rape of men is worse or less worse than the rape of women. But we are not talking much about men being raped. And we are not talking much about men raping boys. And it is a world that unfortunately I understand now. And it is a platform over for which I can make a difference. I can help keep children safe by teaching them and their parents and anybody who loves children and basic decency by extension in life how not to get involved in a situation that will complicate your life for decades afterwards. Not just because of the physical stuff that happens but because of the deception that lodges in your soul. Because the way to rape a child is to sexually groom them so that by the time in stage five or six the time that things get sexual you can have sex with a child and be confident that the child will tell nobody. I mean that is how the model works. You are if I'm a pedophile I would spot a child be aroused by them just like you might spot a woman or a man of grown-up age that you might find arousing but if you're a pedophile you find that kid arousing. And then as I might go oh well you know I met this beautiful guy and I'm going to take him to dinner and be my sweetest most charming self and like you know the pedophile does the same thing and unleashes the weapons of seduction against somebody who is way too young to even comprehend that these are the levers of seduction.

But then this this this relationship gets built out to the most because the the kid is overwhelmed by all of the stuff that's happening to him but it's the special thing and it's our little secret and like you know you've you ain't never had a friend like me it's like the Robin Williams genie bottle coming out coming out of the bottle in Aladdin. I mean it's like it's it's unbelievable the the the world that you get to see with this guy and so then by the time that trousers end up around ankles he is so much a part of your life and you are so much so much of your own confidence is is invested in that person that you you think you are a winning participant because you have allowed yourself to get seduced but what it the lies your soul has to be told by both you and that person that is what messes you up for years because that is what destroys intimacy and trust without quite knowing that that is what's going on it is it is like you have been to a war and come back with post-traumatic stress disorder but you don't realize that you went to war in the first place yeah not you see now that kind of that kind of analogy I can I can certainly relate to but Dion the thing that that again I'm still trying to wrap my head around this is is that you know this happens in our country very often you know people would go oh and they'll they'll make disparaging remarks about certain kinds of people etc etc but I mean if you're a young child you don't even know and you haven't even settled into your own sexuality yet and somebody comes along and and literally as you say and and and this is this is mental manipulation of the highest order it's I'm struggling I'm struggling to get my to get my head around this because children are beautiful special wonderful gifts and it's it's our duty as parents and as society to to let them grow up and be children and mature as they should to go on to lead a life that they choose for themselves not to have this indelible mark imprinted on their on their psyches now you you just you were saying you know this is your story and you called it a cameo so am I to assume that you were one of a few or one of many that this man abused hundreds so um so yes so um by the end of the book I have more than 50 men have confirmed their abuse to me or to um I remember someone who was my publishing partner in all of this um and and by just looking at the pattern I mean if more than 50 people admitted this to me and I know of all the other people who refuse to say anything to me we can we can confidently say that he has right hundreds of men and young boys and and and it's important to realize that it's not really that much about sexuality the I mean Breitenbach has probably right more straight boys than gay ones um because it's teenage boys are or teenagers are confused about everything anyway so and and and they see every time that they see everything that we do time sting so if because you've got no sense of context and and and you know where it's like being a teenager your brain is just I mean if you're sad as a teenager it is time sting if you are excited it is time sting if you are embarrassed it is time sting so as from the point of view of of the pedophile the you'd follow slightly different tricks seducing a gay boy or a straight boy but but it's not really about rape is about power it's not about sex um and that is why you get straight men who write gay boy straight men who write boys and you get gay men who write girls I mean it's a it's much more complicated than sexuality it's about power and it's about the actual psychodynamic it is about why you want to rape that that makes you rape certain certain people so it's it's not that you know it it's not like if you're a straight boy that does not mean you can't be right by a man quite the contrary that said the when I met Willem Breitenbach in 1996 South Africa was still a very very different place and gay was resoningly unokay there was no way to for a 16 year old boy to be gay I mean it was not an option that was available so even though I knew that I was gay it was something that had to happen in secret anyway so at that particular point in time I my my meeting of Breitenbach certainly did play into that it's all a secret anyway your parents can't know anyway kind of thing and I think just practically speaking it is an illustration of one of the consequences of homophobia when you are growing up because if you don't have the space to be gay in the correct way then all of the ways are incorrect anyway so then you're basically left at the mercy of predators because you have no way of distinguishing between wrong and right if all that is right is wrong anyway so so sexuality is much more is much more determined or is much greater influencer on the actual child than it is on the perpetrator so I I I do think we need to to spend considerable time disentangling the the survivor or the victim's sexuality from what is what is happening to him or her my special guest is Deon Wiggitt Deon sure wow Deon is is the author of my only story The Hunt for a Serial Pedophile when we come back we'll find out some more and yeah I'm still trying to untangle this kind of whole thing in my brain but when we come back we'll talk some more about it this is what's involved and we're back with my special guest Deon Wiggitt author of my only story The Hunt for a Serial Pedophile I think Deon the question that I wanted to ask you is is in terms of of the journey that that you've been on because I cannot imagine as I said I mean just what this would do to a child regardless of the of their sexuality or undefined sexuality just the amount of shame and guilt and and and the psychological manipulation must be terrible but have you come across why people would do this I mean is it as a result of their own abuse yes so pretty much all all sexual abusers or sexual predators were abused themselves as children however the best statistics we have is about one in eight so the the important thing there is that seven out of eight survivors of sexual abuse become the opposite of abusers we try to help but you I mean I do you think it is you are deeply unlikely to find a sexual abuser who wasn't sexually abused that is that is part of how that pathology works but in the book I I go a lot into trying to understand that tonight I use Breitenberg's own parents and his own childhood in Kronstadt to to try to to figure out that that why does a problem like Willem Breitenberg exist and and it's a lot to do with psychopathy and the way that psychopaths begin each other in the way with with how children are raised so I mean it's a it's a it's quite a vast conversation that you know I and I don't want to take away people's joy of discovering it themselves in my book my only story also available in africansa's the inkling of the hole at bookstores nationwide and wherever you get your books um if I don't do that but my publisher you know they they listen out to these appearances and then send me emails if I don't like say things like that so thank you for that well the good news is the good news is the honest at the end of the interview we're going to go through the whole thing again and and give out those details so don't you worry about that I know you will I'm just trying to be an inauthentic self-publicist that's but no as we as we talk about this is is you know there is there is still a sense of of humor about you and a sense of joyfulness and and sometimes in the book you can be quite irreverent about certain things is that part of who you are or is that part of the coping mechanism it's extra well I mean I it's both I would say um I think much of things that are part of us are coping mechanisms um I I learned from my father the laughter helps and that if you can you know at least have quite a bleak bleak humoristic take on things it it is just my personality I am pretty irreverent and look these are these are difficult matters to talk about so you know if we can just have a bit of a smile now and again it's it's less harsh it's less hard and I mean life's absurdities are interesting to me and I the only way to get people to interact with this kind of thing is by doing it in a way that is so captivating that you can't put the book down um and and that that was very much what what for me I I had to keep it with a hint of lightness here and again because I can't be serious all the time but also if I want people to understand what it is that I'm talking about then maybe I can write a page turner that reads like a detective story that get people to despite themselves be involved in something that's because I mean it's part of the reason why people don't want to talk about this is because people don't want to talk about it so if we make it more accessible and we we make it more I mean exciting is a laden word but but but more evocative and and at the same time just a little bit lighter because people are more receptive to that then I that this has been a very inelegant answer but it it's I can't just be serious all the time it's just not who I am okay now the question that that I'm going to ask you is surely surely and I mean it is it's an indication of the state of our society in general I mean when we talk gender equality and and things like that our society has a long way to go um and and specifically in terms of it being a male-dominated society but now surely there can't be that many Willem Breitenbach's out there you are as a South African child way more likely to be raped than getting coronavirus it is quite shocking how preponderous this is in our society and once we start looking out for it and I I write in the book about this weird thing that happened is the the way that once I started investigating this one pedophile in a school somebody else would say to me oh I was also raped by my teacher but it wasn't him it was it wasn't this other guy so as I've become like you know more engaged with it and a little bit more known people are telling me these stories about this guy who is pretty famous actually and this guy who you've seen on television for decades now and and so I I'm I'm working on a second season of the podcast where I'm trying to illustrate just how how many of these men there are I mean Willem Breitenbach is a colorful villain but he's not a very interesting person he is he is a sad and inelegant manifestation of a problem that has been with us forever I'm fascinated and I could talk to you for hours but we don't have hours so when we come back let's talk a little bit about what you can do because in in the book you talk about a universal pattern so to to help identify people with these tendencies when we come back let's talk a little bit about that it is what's involved my special guest Dion Wiggett author of my only story the hunt for a serial pedophile it's it's an amazing book and they are they are moments of of lightness in there as well but man alive it is it's a great book very well written but the core of the book is for me quite horrifying we'll be back in just a bit with Dion and we're back it is what's involved with my special guest Dion Wiggett my only story the hunt for a serial pedophile Dion in the book you talk about this pattern this there's this universal pattern and whilst we may prefer not to think about it is it worthwhile being aware of this pattern so we can help our children David if you get nothing from the book and if nobody gets anything from listening to this interview other than it is possible to see these people that would be a stunning result the remember that you can see when a guy fancies a girl or when a boy fancies another boy or whatever and these people are genuinely infatuated with children so when I so so when I see somebody with a child I just think oh well there's a guy with a child I mean like you know it's something you see however we need to look a little bit about the expression on that person's face and at the way they are looking at the child because we are used to seeing a child next to a man and then coming to a certain conclusion but if you put your hand over the child for instance and you look at the man's expression does he look horny I mean it's it's

it's it's not as simple as that going wait a moment this person is is expecting not to be detected however if I could make myself think of the person next to him as something that could be sexual how might that lead me to interpret this guy differently I mean I I go at some length in the book about how we can be more aware of our surroundings and aware of how these men operate so that we can prevent them from getting to our children and the point is that these things are hard to prove because you need a number of affidavits from people who were involved however in order to keep children safe you don't have to be able to prove that somebody is a pedophile you can just think this guy looks dodgy to me and I'm not going to let him anywhere near my children and you know hopefully also I'll have a bit of a lookout and just see is this guy a teacher I mean because remember these these men want to have access to children so they tend to maneuver themselves into positions where they can have seemingly innocent access to children they become teachers they become sports coaches they become religious leaders anything that will give them a seemingly legitimate way to get to the children that they are targeting so unfortunately as much I'm sorry as much as we all wish to pretend that pedophiles do not exist if we carry on pretending that they do not exist we'll just we could end up finding out about their existence in the most shocking and unfortunate of ways if you do not see a pedophile coming he will see you and your children come so in the way that we have read about how to keep us all our children safe from COVID or how to keep our children safe from online bullying this is the greatest danger our children is facing adults who want to have sex with them so it it really is imperative that we all understand how these people operate so that we do not get caught up in it and the people that we are in charge of do not get caught up in that yeah I would agree with you 100 percent there do you know we're heading towards wrapping up and I mean the book does cover all of this stuff in in in great detail would you say though Dion we get that that by investigating this by writing the book um for you personally has it been a cathartic journey enormously so when I knew that Willem Breitenbach was still carrying on grooming and raping boys and I was doing nothing about it I felt complicit and and I felt burdened with this knowledge um and so it it's it became incredibly important to me to not only stop him but also to expose him to to make an example of him he's a he's a media figure and I met him through journalism and he kept telling me to you know find new ways of telling stories and you know it might have taken me over two decades but I have found a different way of telling a story and telling everybody in the process about Willem Breitenbach and saying that man is dangerous that man wants to rape your children he is on bail at the moment the the trial um continue well the the trial will come up at some point um but he is stuck in his mother's house near Hatenbos everybody knows who he is I mean every other week I get a picture of somebody who yeah I could send a picture of somebody who saw him in the spa in Hatenbos and you know show me here he is having breakfast with his mom and I mean it's at one point it's quite creepy but at the other it's like you know this guy is owned that's it it is harder getting over a lifetime of self-hate than it is to write a book or two so I I very often feel better and I'm I'm learning how to be kinder to myself and how to like myself a little bit more but it will it will take more than a book to change my life forever I mean it's you can't undo what happened you can just try to deal with it better hey which leads me very nicely to to my my question my next question is is what's next for Dion um you mentioned you're working on a season two of uh of your podcast so that's I mean what else is there um well right now I'm I'm deeply focused on on season two all new season all new bullfrogs and there's some other stuff coming up later this year but like you know give a man a moment to do one thing at a time

Dion before we say goodbye and and I want to say thank you thank you for for for being courageous enough uh to to put your hand up and say this far and no further to write a book like this because I mean we we we have glossed over a little bit but it it's not an easy book to write so thank you for that where can people get hold of the book all good bookstores as you mentioned uh also available in africans uh is it available online absolutely um you can get it taken out and loot and all of those it's uh published by penguin random house it's south africa's leading publisher wherever there are books you'll find it fantastic stuff and the podcast is that available can we listen to it if we if we haven't heard it yet always available it is free wherever you get your podcasts it's called my only story as well uh there are 40 episodes but read the book first and then listen to the podcast would be my recommendation i mean like you know like so because it'll just give you such great background to the podcast and i make money if you buy the book and i make no money if you listen to the podcast so i mean i'll i'll just leave that moral predicament in the in the hands of your audience that's the thing about podcasting for the most part it's a labor of love i think i think my podcast is just over 150 episodes in yet to see a cent from it but hopefully we can change at least one life by doing it that's what we aim for anyway dianne if somebody needs to get hold of you personally uh is is there a way to do that do you not encourage that uh of course people can get hold of me i am a little bit better getting back to people um always because i get quite overwhelmed um but you can contact me via my onlystory.org and yes and i thank you for your message and i'm so sorry if i don't respond to it i really do try though and and i people have been so kind and so nice and i i really appreciate that so much and i'm i'm sorry for but i find it quite hard to respond to people saying that i'm cool because you know what do you say oh yes i'll die the best thank you dianne thank you thank you and i'm looking forward to that that second season maybe we're going to need to have a chat about that when it comes out as well it wraps it up thank you wraps it up for our show this is what's involved my special guest dianne we get dianne may you go from strength to strength mate and thanks for chatting to us let me go wrapping it up get the book it it's it it could be all sorts of of i mean i think it's like a detective story but it's true love get the book my only story uh the hunt for a serial pedophile as i said that wraps it up for this particular edition of what's involved to each and every one of you thank you for listening