When mild-mannered
Bishops old boy Paul Jones told his friends that the surprise
domestic-violence order the police had served on him at work was obtained by a
woman he’d threatened to unfriend on Facebook, many found it hard to believe –
there had to be a more serious reason.
Even more bewildering to the 36-year-old Jones is that the purported victim – a woman with whom he’d “shared a kiss or two” in the space of a week, years ago – said she’d been advised to seek the order by his ex-girlfriend, well-known Cape Town attorney Ashley Bird.
The spurned friend is fashion designer Danielle Vermaas, who uses the professional name of Danielle Margaux. Two years after his flirtation with Vermaas, Jones hooked up with Bird. Their six-month relationship ended amicably, he thought, in July last year.
“I just want you to know that I have done a search on you and I’m very anxious because you and my ex-girlfriend have several Facebook friends in common.”
The ease with which strangers can connect through mutual friends on Facebook – and the painful consequences for Paul Jones – are what prompt his anxious first words when he meets with Noseweek at a restaurant in Newlands, Cape Town.
Although lawyer-talk first alerted Noseweek to the story, it took some sleuthing to identify Jones, and then numerous emails through an intermediary, to set up this meeting.
Noseweek had been tipped off that two of Jones’s exes – Ashley Bird, a one-time ballerina and now a partner in a top Cape Town law firm, and Danielle Vermaas, a local designer who goes by the name of Danielle Margaux – had purportedly teamed up to have a Domestic Violence protection order slapped on him, on charges that were patently without substance.
A domestic violence order is no trivial thing but lawyers, policemen and even magistrates have all contributed to trivialising it. (See editorial in this issue).
Bird and her partners at well-known law firm Morris, Morris, Morris and Morris have since been briefed about the facts of the case, but have refused to meet the victim of the outrage.
Jones finally agreed to see Noseweek as a last resort in a system that has failed him. “I’ve exhausted every avenue to clear my name,” he says.
After matriculating at Bishops, Jones went toEngland
where he obtained an LLB (Hons) from the University of Buckingham Cape Town
His story:
“Several years ago I met a girl called Danielle Vermaas at a dinner party. We became friends and kissed once or twice, but nothing serious happened between us. It was a very brief fling. I did not take it seriously from a romantic point of view. Quite simply, she is not my sort of woman.
“After that and during early 2009, we remained friends. She’d sometimes visit me at my parents’ home and became very fond of my mother.”
Might Vermaas have been under the impression they were in an exclusive relationship? “No. It was just a fun friendship,” Jones stresses.
During the first half of 2009, Vermaas started “getting weird”, says Jones: sending him numerous emails, phoning regularly, and constantly sending Facebook messages.
“[As a fashion designer], she would make me clothes, invite me to functions, cook food and show up at my flat with it, unannounced. I always turned her down.
“In a nutshell, she was in love with me. I kept saying, I’m not interested. Basically, I was just trying to say f-off.”
Towards the middle of 2009, Jones says he decided to start putting some “serious distance” between himself and Vermaas. He produces Facebook messages sent to him by Vermaas to demonstrate the point:
On 15 March 2009 at 11.07pm: Hi there! How are you? I am lying in my bed and thinking…I miss you and miss having you in my life and I would love to have you back in it…I do have a lot of issues, I know, and I suppose I am a difficult woman at times…In the same breath, I could have made the biggest tit out of myself now, because you might have met someone else…Deep down inside I hope you miss me as much as I miss you!…I don’t want you to feel that I am pressurising you…
On 21 April 2009: Hallo Paul, you must think I am crazy…I just read the mail I sent you on Sunday and it was a bit intense…It feels like my life is falling apart ...
On 13 July, 2009: Paul, I don’t understand why you don’t answer my emails. Have you thought about what I said? I really think we’d be great together.
Later that day Jones replies: Hi Danielle, I feel we keep going over this. I think you keep misreading my friendship. I like you as a person but am just not interested in going out with you. Please just accept this as you are making things awkward. Paul.
On 18 July, 2009, Vermaas writes: You are obviously very angry with me and have decided not to contact me at all. I, on the other hand, am not a person of a few words, as you very well know and have decided to mail you, because I know you won’t even pick up the phone if I try to call you. I should probably just let you be, but…I have gotten used to spending time with you… You always say I am needy. Perhaps, but it is because I feel like the outsider in your life, the one you keep at a distance…
You’re probably thinking I’m some sort of psycho chick and that I keep contacting you in all sorts of ways, but… I do mean well…Hope to hear from you soon, Danielle x.
Vermaas’s overtures continued, accelerating in November 2009 when Jones began a relationship with Bird. When he speaks about her, it’s easy to see that this was a woman who clearly meant something in Jones’s life. “We had our first date on 17 November. Ashley is beautiful and intelligent.”
About a week after this first date, Vermaas arrived at a bar where Jones was having a drink with friends, and tried to speak to him.
“She followed me home and insisted we talk. She asked me whether I was going out with Ashley Bird and then said she knew I was. She knew Ashley was Jewish and told me her father was Donald Bird. I didn’t know what she was talking about. It turns out that Donald Bird was Ashley’s grandfather. How Danielle came by this information, I don’t know. Danielle also made some derogatory remarks about Ashley being Jewish. It took quite an effort to get rid of Danielle that evening. I had to repeatedly ask her to leave.”
“She started crying, and told me she loved me, saying she was going to leave the country as there was nothing left for her here. She continued to slag off Ashley, using anti-Semitic comments.”
The next day, a somewhat freaked-out Jones removed Vermaas as a friend on Facebook.
On 30 November, Vermaas writes: Hey Paul, I am sorry for the things I said about your new girlfriend the other night. I just think you need to know that this girl is not for you. This relationship will not last. She is a Jew and they will not accept you. They are not like us. Ashley Bird, sy klink soos ’n Jood. I am telling you this because you need to know. Danielle.
The next day Jones responds: You need to leave me alone and stop saying bad things about my girlfriend – she has done nothing to you.
After their showdown in November, Vermaas slowed down contact with Jones for a while, but a month or two later, she started sending more emails and Facebook messages.
“The tone was friendly – she claimed she wanted to be friends. She sent me a Facebook friend request [again], which I accepted. During December 2009 and January 2010, she made contact again. I did not respond as I was really in love with Ashley and did not think much about Danielle. She contacted me a few times in 2010 It all seemed harmless.”
For example on 1 January 2010, at 4.28pm, Vermaas writes: Hi Paul, haven’t spoken to you in a while and I thought it well to wish you all the best of luck for 2010…and especially with you starting a new job on Monday…good luck! I know that you will make a great success of it….
Jones and Bird dated from November 2009 until the end of June 2010, when they split up. He stresses that it was an amicable parting: that she had wanted “space”.
“There were no bad feelings between us. Everything was cool. In fact, she susequently sometimes asked me for my help, which I gave her freely.”
When her mother was diagnosed with a serious illness a few weeks later, Paul was among the first she told, and he was there to support her.
But this is where it gets really weird, he relates.
“In early August 2010, a month-or-so after his relationship with Bird ended, Vermaas started “causing problems again” on Facebook. This included sending friendship requests to female friends on his site. “They would call me, asking who is Danielle Vermaas? Why does she want to be my friend? I sent her an SMS asking her to stop, or I would remove her as a friend from Facebook. I felt she was up to no good.”
It gets weirder, he says, because, within a week, Bird suddenly blocked him on Facebook.
“I sent her an SMS asking why she had done this, but she did not respond.”
Jones suspected that, some time between 6 and 12 August, Vermaas used Facebook to establish that Jones and Bird were no longer dating, that she then contacted Bird with the intention of causing trouble and driving a final wedge between them. [He would be proved correct – but that only comes later – Ed].
“Whatever Danielle told her, Ashley did not check with me whether what she had been told was true. I was confused and hurt as I couldn’t think of anything I had done wrong to her.”
Jones, in the meantime, had maintained a friendship with Bird’s mother. “I would occasionally call on her – always by prior appointment – to take some flowers or just for a chat. She is a Mills & Boon addict. I started writing a Mills & Boon-type romance and would take bits of the manuscript to her for proofing; really just to entertain her.”
On 27 September 2009 he arranged to visit Bird’s mother and took her some fluffy white slippers and some bath salts. He hadn’t visited in the previous three weeks, prompting her to ask whether he’d been away.
“She asked if it was true I’d been dating another girl at the same time I was dating Ashley. She named Danielle Vermaas. I denied it emphatically. I explained that I’d had issues with Danielle before and that I’d always loved Ashley.”
Now he knew for certain that Danielle had contacted Ashley.
And, within no time he also knew that Ashley had rushed to tell Danielle that he knew. Because, within an hour they’d spoken to each other.
Within an hour of his visit to Mrs Bird, Jones received a hostile message from Ashley Bird – the first communication he’d had from her since her birthday three weeks earlier: “It’s time to move on now and leave me and my family alone. Please don’t contact me and my family again!”
(Later that evening, Ashely Bird SMSed him again: “Hi Paul. I apologise for my earlier SMS. I am really not in a good space. I do, however, think it is best for you to move on.”)
Next day, it was Vermaas sending Jones and his mother an SMS, asking to meet. (She also got a friend to ring his mother with the same message.) All these messages were ignored. But that was hardly reason to anticipate the shock of what came next.
Three days later Jones got a call from the manageress at his office: the police had called, looking for him.
For an outstanding parking ticket?
No, much more serious. In fact, the office manageress told him, the police had warned her that he was to be considered dangerous. They wished to serve a restraining order on him in terms of the Domestic Violence Act.
Danielle Vermaas had filed for a protection order (a kinder title for the same thing) against him on the 28 September – the day after Mrs Bird had revealed to him that Vermaas had contacted her daughter and had claimed he’d been double-dating them.
“The day before she filed for the order against me, she wanted to meet me. It was the most bizarre thing. When she filed for the restraining order, she told the police that I was to be considered violent. She gave them my work number and my work address. The police then made several phone calls to my office.
“My head just spun.”
Jones runs through the haze of what ensued over the next few days. His employers said they were concerned about how clients would react to the information. “I didn’t make a big deal of it. I just quietly left. What was I going to do?
“I then had to present myself at theCape Town
“I looked at Danielle’s statement and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was all bullshit. The reasons she gave for wanting the restraining order were that I was a dishonest person who did not pay tax to SARS. She then cited an SMS from two months earlier, in which I threatened to remove her as a friend on Facebook if she did not leave me alone.”
He continues: “It was insane. There was one other thing: at the bottom of the application, she said the reason she was filing was that she had been advised to do it by my ex-girlfriend, Ashley Bird. I can’t describe how I felt. It made no sense.
“So now I have no job, somebody has a restraining order against me for no reason, and I hear that my ex-girlfriend, someone I’ve only ever been kind to, is involved.”
Danielle Vermaas’s application for a protection order – Noseweek has obtained a copy – is too long to reproduce here. Some excerpts:
The order had been granted without notice and without Jones having been given a hearing – a fact that irks him about the nature of restraining orders and the ease with which they are granted. “It’s bizarre. The man is simply presumed guilty. It’s a case of ‘better safe than sorry’.”
Confused, but determined to get to the bottom of things, Jones contacted law firm Abrahams and Gross for advice. The attorneys took one look at the affidavit and told Jones he had a serious problem.
“They said there were no grounds for a restraining order, but that it was essential to get it dismissed as soon as possible. They said that Vermaas could try to deliberately manufacture a breach of the order which would mean I could be arrested and go to jail.
“My lawyers filed an opposing affidavit. It was quite simple – address each lie and show that the last contact you had with her was two months before she filed.”
Jones was able to provide tax records to show that, in fact, he had overpaid tax and had actually received a refund from SARS.
Jones’s answering affidavit is also in Noseweek’s possession.
Excerpts include: “The application is… ill-fated and amounts to a mockery of the true objectives of the Domestic Violence Act…Applicant and I never lived together in a relationship or partnership of any sort. [She] was merely a friend like all the other male and female friends that I have… [If] the scope of the Domestic Violence Act were to extend to an area as in this case…any confrontation in the normal scope of a friendship could be construed as domestic violence, with absurd consequences.”
His answering affidavit details how Vermaas sent “friend” requests to Jones’s friends on Facebook, which prompted him to tell her, in August 2010, that he was “permanently removing” her as a friend on Facebook. He says, “It is astonishing to note how the Applicant is distorting the true facts by using the phrase to mean that I have committed some sort of Domestic Violence against her”.
A lawyer from Abrahams and Gross attended the magistrate’s court, where he served the opposing affidavit on Vermaas.
Jones’s attorneys said they wanted to move to a court date. That was when Vermaas said that she wanted none other than Ashley Bird to represent her. Jones’s attorney reported: “[This} will be a complete disaster simply because Ms Bird will be a witness in the matter and I can see no reason why Ms Bird will want to get involved. Ms Vermaas also indicated that her main concern was that our client [Jones] was badmouthing her in and around the Jewish community from which she obtained most of her work.”
The next court date was set down, for 3 November last year, which left Jones with the interim order hanging over him and the cost of yet another court appearance.
On the return date, Vermaas showed up with an attorney – not Bird – and changed her tune once again. “Now she was asking for a restraining order requiring me to stop stalking her.”
Jones laughs bitterly: “I don’t even know where she lives or works and hadn’t seen her in 11 months. She just wanted me to be found guilty of something”.
Jones received the following confirmation from family law attorney Bertus Preller on November 3: “I wish to confirm that Ms Vermaas has withdrawn her application. Initially she wanted an apology and an agreement that you won’t stalk her in future, which we naturally refused and we demanded that the matter go to trial, however, her attorney backed off and withdrew the application.”
When the attorneys phoned him with the good news that the application had been withdrawn, Joness heaved a sigh of relief. “I thought, phew, it’s all gone away.”
Jones goes on: “So, the application is dismissed, she walks out. At this stage, one side of me is relieved, as the stalker girl is gone, but another part of me feels aggrieved. Firstly, I had incurred unnecessary legal costs – I had stopped counting at R20,000. Secondly, I was furious that an unsubstantiated order had been brought against me by ‘a woman scorned’ who lied to the court, and thirdly, I could not understand why Ashley Bird had become involved. I could not think of a single thing I had done against her. The only thing I was guilty of was doing good things for her and her family. In return, she branded me with the stigma of a domestic violence charge which never goes away. People just think that you go around beating up women.”
Two weeks ago, Jones asked a woman out. “She had heard this story that I threaten women.Cape Town
He can’t imagine having a normal life and a normal relationship. “To be honest, women scare the shit out of me at the moment. I have no plans to date any women for the foreseeable future.”
Asked for comment on how on earth Jones had an interim protection order slapped against him on the basis of that application, Magistrate Van der Spuy referred Noseweek to Linda Unuvar, Judicial Head of the Family Court in Cape Town. While reluctant to comment on an individual case, Unuvar said:
“This is an affidavit. [In Danielle Vermaas’s case, it appears to have been an unsigned statement. – Ed.] If a person takes an oath and says I have been threatened, and claims that someone is calling her at all hours and upsetting her emotionally, that is harassment. If she says under oath that any act of domestic violence is committed, the court must grant an interim protection order. That includes harrassment, intimidation, unwanted calling or SMSing. Even if such harassment is the only complaint, it still warrants an order.”
Unuvar said that once the order is served on the respondent, “the respondent can come to court and say, ‘this was served on me and it is not true, I want to bring the return date forward within 24 hours’. We give him the earliest available date. If it is urgent, we will hear it”.
Unuvar said there would have been nothing stopping someone in Jones’s position from asking for a counter order against his accuser and saying that in fact, he was the one being emotionally abused. “He would have had that right. He should have anticipated the hearing and asked the court for a protection order against her. We would have had a hearing within a few days.”
Unuvar stressed that protection orders are not granted if the court is not satisfied that some form of domestic violence has been committed. “If an interim order is granted, and, on the return date, the court is not satisfied, it will not confirm the order.”
Abuse of the system is the exception, she added. “We are all trained and experienced magistrates, but we do not know whether somebody is lying under oath.”
Vermaas had this to say to Noseweek: “I have spoken to my lawyer and have decided not to comment. I am very busy and am not going to invest any time in this.”
And Ashley Bird? She agreed to meet a reporter from Noseweek at a coffee shop near her office, and arrived accompanied by her colleague, Susan Dros. The answers she gave to Noseweek’s questions do not always tally with the documentary evidence that Noseweek has seen, and were aimed at generally discrediting Jones, while minimising the interaction she’d had with Vermaas and her role in the latter’s application for the protection order.
The closest Bird had got to giving Jones an explanation for her involvement in Vermaas’s application came in a letter she wrote to his mother shortly after the order was granted. Some extracts:
“I am sure you can understand the tension it caused when he would visit my mother and she would not tell me that he’d visited. I would hear from Olivia (my mother’s domestic worker) that he had visited and what had been said. I did not make a big deal out of this as I didn’t want to upset my mother and I assumed Paul was visiting with only good intentions.
“On 28 September I phoned home only to be told by Olivia that Paul was there again and talking to my mother about me. This upset me, as my mother had mentioned the day before that having visitors was very tiring. …When I came home … my mother confirmed … that Paul had made certain derogatory remarks about Danielle, which I do not believe to be true.
“Since I had been advised by Danielle that Paul had threatened her in the past – and I now knew he was aware that she and I had made contact… I did telephone Danielle, and I told her that if Paul were to threaten her with any further legal action, she should contact me to discuss it.
“Danielle advised me that she was scared Paul would harm her and she was thinking of taking out a restraining order… I advised her (as I would with anyone) that if she genuinely felt threatened… then she should get a restraining order. She asked me to assist her and I told her that she should ask the police…
“I am certain that the contents of this email…will be upsetting to you. I have not forgotten the beautiful things that Paul has done for my family and me, but I have had equally numerous unpleasant experiences involving Paul…
“Wishing you and Paul only the best. Ashley.”
Now, she told Noseweek that he was “weird”, that friends had told her he was an alcoholic (she confirmed that he had never consumed alcohol or smoked in her presence throughout their relationship in deference to her wishes, but now believed this to be a sign that he was “obsessive”); she said he was a “stalker” since friends had told her they had seen him “lurking” near her office and she believed she had seen him “lurking” downstairs from her Sea Crest apartment; that he kept visiting her mother “day and night” just to irritate her [Ashley]; that she had shown his “Mills and Boon” manuscript to a psychologist and a psychiatrist she knew and they had both described it as “abnormal, verging on psychotic”. [She sent us a copy, which I read in lurid anticipation, only to find it pretty harmless, even good, as Mills and Boon novels go. My diagnosis: that psychologist and psychiatrist must be “verging on the psychotic” – Ed.]
But, she emphasised, what really upset her were Jones’s “endless” lies. [i.e. don’t believe anything he tells you? – Ed.]
Did she herself have any reason to believe he might be violent? “Yes.” Why? “When he got angry, he would just get up and leave.”
Later Bird would add to the list that a “good friend” had recently told her Jones had plans to abduct her.
Jones’s retort: “What am I supposed to do with her, once I’ve abducted her? It is becoming increasingly clear that in order to justify what she did last year, she has attacked my character by spreading rumours and lies about me. I have now been accused by Ashley of being a liar, capable of irrational behaviour, an alcoholic, a cheating bastard and most recently an abductor. The last is just ludicrous.”
And what about Danielle Vermaas? Noseweek asks Bird.
“She contacted me on Facebook and we arranged to meet. We compared notes and worked out that Paul had been cross-dating us. She told me Paul had sent her a “weird” sms threatening that if she did not leave me alone, I [Ashley] was going to bring court applications against her. [Vermaas has not produced any evidence to support this allegation. – Ed.]
“I told her, if he threatens you like that, rather phone and ask me what the true position is.”
Bird explained her involvement in Vermaas’s protection order. “Danielle called me on my cell phone when I was in the car rushing to downtown to attend the HPCSA hearing of Erica Grous’s former psychiatrist, Dr Davids. She told me that Paul had threatened her – I wasn’t interested how – and that she was really frightened. She asked if she could get a restraining order. I said yes, if you’re scared. She asked if I could help her, but I said no, I don’t practise criminal law and I don’t want to get involved. I wouldn’t know where to start. I suggested she go to the police. It’s the advice I would have given to anyone.”
That was it? All on the spur of the moment?
“That was it.”
Surely the evidence suggests Vermaas had been “stalking” Jones, rather than the other way around? “Yes, they’re both weird. I want nothing more to do with either of them.”
Hold that thought for a moment. Because this is when the local version of WikiLeaks – an anonymous website hacker of sorts – steps in to really stir things up. Immediately after the restraining order was served on him, Jones spent many evenings at his favourite pub mulling over the mysteries of the case with his friends. Somebody obviously knew somebody, because three months after the event, says Jones, a parcel of web printouts appeared in his postbox. They were of Facebook messages that Vermaas had sent to various friends in a plot to cause trouble between Jones and Bird.
It transpires Jones was right in suspecting that something fishy was up early in August 2010. The printouts show that on 5 August she sent a note to her friend Rasheda Samuels: “I see you are friends with Miss Bird whahahahaha” and she asks Rasheda: “so tell me – are they still a married couple ?????”.
On 9 August she writes to her friend Gustav Louw who has also befriended Bird on Facebook: “My fuck Gustav, I see you are friends with Ashley Bird!!!! This calls for an evening of champagne and snooping on her Facebook site!!!!”
The proposed evening of champagne and snooping appears to have paid off. Next day she was writing to Bird:
“I would normally not email someone I don’t know, but I had a very strange email from your boyfriend Paul tonight. He seems upset about mutual people we know on Facebook and implies that I have got something to do with this… [Jones found she was approaching Facebook friends he had in common with Bird and told her to lay off, or he’d unfriend her. – Ed.]
“What you do, your relationship and friends have nothing to do with me. I have no issues with you being his girlfriend now.
“I suppose this is as strange for you as it is for me. Good luck! Danielle.”
Every line was a lie, but Ashely took the bait.
Bird’s reply: “Dear Danielle, Paul is not my boyfriend and has not been for a while. Whilst we were together he did tell me that you wanted him back but I never commented. I would like to meet for a coffee. There is much I would like to discuss.”
Danielle’s happy reply: “I should also like to meet up with you for a chat. I am rather shocked now, but we can discuss everything when we meet.
Ashely’s reply: “Cool, Friday after work.”
That weekend Bird “unfriended” Jones on Facebook.
Also amongst the “hacker’s” printouts is the anxious message sent by Bird to Vermaas on 27 September: “Need to chat urgently.”
Two hours later Vermaas writes: “Thanks for calling me…I would like to discuss with you sometime what the procedure is with regards to getting a restraining order. I think it would be better if I get it, before he does something…I had a bad feeling ever since I met him. Let me know when you will be available to discuss the restraining order, as I am very serious about it. Perhaps it would be in your best interests to get one too!”
Bird’s reply: “I have no idea how to get a restraining order, but will find out. Let’s do coffee.”
So, not quite the rushed conversation while driving, then.
Bird told Noseweek that Jones had given lawyer Susan Dros copies of several of these illicitly obtained Facebook printouts. But, she said, she was not at liberty to show them to us as they were the subject of a police investigation. The police, she added ominously, believe they know the address from which the Facebook interloper operated.
Matters get stranger still: between February and May this year, Bird’s Facebook friends started receiving abusive messages about her, all emanating from Vermaas’s Facebook address. A sample: “How’s your stupid Jewish friend now. She’s a loser.”
She addressed a lawyer’s letter to Vermaas demanding that she immediately stop sending these messages and threatening court action.
Vermaas’s lawyers responded by saying that someone had pirated Vermaas’s Facebook site and that her friends, too, had been receiving abusive messages. And that she had already reported the matter to the police.
So who’s up to no good now? And who’s trying to mislead whom?
Even more bewildering to the 36-year-old Jones is that the purported victim – a woman with whom he’d “shared a kiss or two” in the space of a week, years ago – said she’d been advised to seek the order by his ex-girlfriend, well-known Cape Town attorney Ashley Bird.
The spurned friend is fashion designer Danielle Vermaas, who uses the professional name of Danielle Margaux. Two years after his flirtation with Vermaas, Jones hooked up with Bird. Their six-month relationship ended amicably, he thought, in July last year.
“I just want you to know that I have done a search on you and I’m very anxious because you and my ex-girlfriend have several Facebook friends in common.”
The ease with which strangers can connect through mutual friends on Facebook – and the painful consequences for Paul Jones – are what prompt his anxious first words when he meets with Noseweek at a restaurant in Newlands, Cape Town.
Although lawyer-talk first alerted Noseweek to the story, it took some sleuthing to identify Jones, and then numerous emails through an intermediary, to set up this meeting.
Noseweek had been tipped off that two of Jones’s exes – Ashley Bird, a one-time ballerina and now a partner in a top Cape Town law firm, and Danielle Vermaas, a local designer who goes by the name of Danielle Margaux – had purportedly teamed up to have a Domestic Violence protection order slapped on him, on charges that were patently without substance.
A domestic violence order is no trivial thing but lawyers, policemen and even magistrates have all contributed to trivialising it. (See editorial in this issue).
Bird and her partners at well-known law firm Morris, Morris, Morris and Morris have since been briefed about the facts of the case, but have refused to meet the victim of the outrage.
Jones finally agreed to see Noseweek as a last resort in a system that has failed him. “I’ve exhausted every avenue to clear my name,” he says.
After matriculating at Bishops, Jones went to
His story:
“Several years ago I met a girl called Danielle Vermaas at a dinner party. We became friends and kissed once or twice, but nothing serious happened between us. It was a very brief fling. I did not take it seriously from a romantic point of view. Quite simply, she is not my sort of woman.
“After that and during early 2009, we remained friends. She’d sometimes visit me at my parents’ home and became very fond of my mother.”
Might Vermaas have been under the impression they were in an exclusive relationship? “No. It was just a fun friendship,” Jones stresses.
During the first half of 2009, Vermaas started “getting weird”, says Jones: sending him numerous emails, phoning regularly, and constantly sending Facebook messages.
“[As a fashion designer], she would make me clothes, invite me to functions, cook food and show up at my flat with it, unannounced. I always turned her down.
“In a nutshell, she was in love with me. I kept saying, I’m not interested. Basically, I was just trying to say f-off.”
Towards the middle of 2009, Jones says he decided to start putting some “serious distance” between himself and Vermaas. He produces Facebook messages sent to him by Vermaas to demonstrate the point:
On 15 March 2009 at 11.07pm: Hi there! How are you? I am lying in my bed and thinking…I miss you and miss having you in my life and I would love to have you back in it…I do have a lot of issues, I know, and I suppose I am a difficult woman at times…In the same breath, I could have made the biggest tit out of myself now, because you might have met someone else…Deep down inside I hope you miss me as much as I miss you!…I don’t want you to feel that I am pressurising you…
On 21 April 2009: Hallo Paul, you must think I am crazy…I just read the mail I sent you on Sunday and it was a bit intense…It feels like my life is falling apart ...
On 13 July, 2009: Paul, I don’t understand why you don’t answer my emails. Have you thought about what I said? I really think we’d be great together.
Later that day Jones replies: Hi Danielle, I feel we keep going over this. I think you keep misreading my friendship. I like you as a person but am just not interested in going out with you. Please just accept this as you are making things awkward. Paul.
On 18 July, 2009, Vermaas writes: You are obviously very angry with me and have decided not to contact me at all. I, on the other hand, am not a person of a few words, as you very well know and have decided to mail you, because I know you won’t even pick up the phone if I try to call you. I should probably just let you be, but…I have gotten used to spending time with you… You always say I am needy. Perhaps, but it is because I feel like the outsider in your life, the one you keep at a distance…
You’re probably thinking I’m some sort of psycho chick and that I keep contacting you in all sorts of ways, but… I do mean well…Hope to hear from you soon, Danielle x.
Vermaas’s overtures continued, accelerating in November 2009 when Jones began a relationship with Bird. When he speaks about her, it’s easy to see that this was a woman who clearly meant something in Jones’s life. “We had our first date on 17 November. Ashley is beautiful and intelligent.”
About a week after this first date, Vermaas arrived at a bar where Jones was having a drink with friends, and tried to speak to him.
“She followed me home and insisted we talk. She asked me whether I was going out with Ashley Bird and then said she knew I was. She knew Ashley was Jewish and told me her father was Donald Bird. I didn’t know what she was talking about. It turns out that Donald Bird was Ashley’s grandfather. How Danielle came by this information, I don’t know. Danielle also made some derogatory remarks about Ashley being Jewish. It took quite an effort to get rid of Danielle that evening. I had to repeatedly ask her to leave.”
“She started crying, and told me she loved me, saying she was going to leave the country as there was nothing left for her here. She continued to slag off Ashley, using anti-Semitic comments.”
The next day, a somewhat freaked-out Jones removed Vermaas as a friend on Facebook.
On 30 November, Vermaas writes: Hey Paul, I am sorry for the things I said about your new girlfriend the other night. I just think you need to know that this girl is not for you. This relationship will not last. She is a Jew and they will not accept you. They are not like us. Ashley Bird, sy klink soos ’n Jood. I am telling you this because you need to know. Danielle.
The next day Jones responds: You need to leave me alone and stop saying bad things about my girlfriend – she has done nothing to you.
After their showdown in November, Vermaas slowed down contact with Jones for a while, but a month or two later, she started sending more emails and Facebook messages.
“The tone was friendly – she claimed she wanted to be friends. She sent me a Facebook friend request [again], which I accepted. During December 2009 and January 2010, she made contact again. I did not respond as I was really in love with Ashley and did not think much about Danielle. She contacted me a few times in 2010 It all seemed harmless.”
For example on 1 January 2010, at 4.28pm, Vermaas writes: Hi Paul, haven’t spoken to you in a while and I thought it well to wish you all the best of luck for 2010…and especially with you starting a new job on Monday…good luck! I know that you will make a great success of it….
Jones and Bird dated from November 2009 until the end of June 2010, when they split up. He stresses that it was an amicable parting: that she had wanted “space”.
“There were no bad feelings between us. Everything was cool. In fact, she susequently sometimes asked me for my help, which I gave her freely.”
When her mother was diagnosed with a serious illness a few weeks later, Paul was among the first she told, and he was there to support her.
But this is where it gets really weird, he relates.
“In early August 2010, a month-or-so after his relationship with Bird ended, Vermaas started “causing problems again” on Facebook. This included sending friendship requests to female friends on his site. “They would call me, asking who is Danielle Vermaas? Why does she want to be my friend? I sent her an SMS asking her to stop, or I would remove her as a friend from Facebook. I felt she was up to no good.”
It gets weirder, he says, because, within a week, Bird suddenly blocked him on Facebook.
“I sent her an SMS asking why she had done this, but she did not respond.”
Jones suspected that, some time between 6 and 12 August, Vermaas used Facebook to establish that Jones and Bird were no longer dating, that she then contacted Bird with the intention of causing trouble and driving a final wedge between them. [He would be proved correct – but that only comes later – Ed].
“Whatever Danielle told her, Ashley did not check with me whether what she had been told was true. I was confused and hurt as I couldn’t think of anything I had done wrong to her.”
Jones, in the meantime, had maintained a friendship with Bird’s mother. “I would occasionally call on her – always by prior appointment – to take some flowers or just for a chat. She is a Mills & Boon addict. I started writing a Mills & Boon-type romance and would take bits of the manuscript to her for proofing; really just to entertain her.”
On 27 September 2009 he arranged to visit Bird’s mother and took her some fluffy white slippers and some bath salts. He hadn’t visited in the previous three weeks, prompting her to ask whether he’d been away.
“She asked if it was true I’d been dating another girl at the same time I was dating Ashley. She named Danielle Vermaas. I denied it emphatically. I explained that I’d had issues with Danielle before and that I’d always loved Ashley.”
Now he knew for certain that Danielle had contacted Ashley.
And, within no time he also knew that Ashley had rushed to tell Danielle that he knew. Because, within an hour they’d spoken to each other.
Within an hour of his visit to Mrs Bird, Jones received a hostile message from Ashley Bird – the first communication he’d had from her since her birthday three weeks earlier: “It’s time to move on now and leave me and my family alone. Please don’t contact me and my family again!”
(Later that evening, Ashely Bird SMSed him again: “Hi Paul. I apologise for my earlier SMS. I am really not in a good space. I do, however, think it is best for you to move on.”)
Next day, it was Vermaas sending Jones and his mother an SMS, asking to meet. (She also got a friend to ring his mother with the same message.) All these messages were ignored. But that was hardly reason to anticipate the shock of what came next.
Three days later Jones got a call from the manageress at his office: the police had called, looking for him.
For an outstanding parking ticket?
No, much more serious. In fact, the office manageress told him, the police had warned her that he was to be considered dangerous. They wished to serve a restraining order on him in terms of the Domestic Violence Act.
Danielle Vermaas had filed for a protection order (a kinder title for the same thing) against him on the 28 September – the day after Mrs Bird had revealed to him that Vermaas had contacted her daughter and had claimed he’d been double-dating them.
“The day before she filed for the order against me, she wanted to meet me. It was the most bizarre thing. When she filed for the restraining order, she told the police that I was to be considered violent. She gave them my work number and my work address. The police then made several phone calls to my office.
“My head just spun.”
Jones runs through the haze of what ensued over the next few days. His employers said they were concerned about how clients would react to the information. “I didn’t make a big deal of it. I just quietly left. What was I going to do?
“I then had to present myself at the
“I looked at Danielle’s statement and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was all bullshit. The reasons she gave for wanting the restraining order were that I was a dishonest person who did not pay tax to SARS. She then cited an SMS from two months earlier, in which I threatened to remove her as a friend on Facebook if she did not leave me alone.”
He continues: “It was insane. There was one other thing: at the bottom of the application, she said the reason she was filing was that she had been advised to do it by my ex-girlfriend, Ashley Bird. I can’t describe how I felt. It made no sense.
“So now I have no job, somebody has a restraining order against me for no reason, and I hear that my ex-girlfriend, someone I’ve only ever been kind to, is involved.”
Danielle Vermaas’s application for a protection order – Noseweek has obtained a copy – is too long to reproduce here. Some excerpts:
- A few weeks ago he sent me a sms saying “stop
this facebook crap with Ashley. If I find anyone on her site tmrw who is
not meant to be there my reaction will be extreme.” … on the 12th August
2010 one sms read (because I did not respond): “Call me in the next 5 mins
or I am removing you permanently.”
- I received a call from Ashley Bird…She is a
lawyer…She suggested a restraining order.
- I am an honest and trustworthy person who
does not manipulate people. He is not an honest person as he does not pay
taxes to SARS.
- Please grant a restraining order, because he
clearly despises me and I am scared.
The order had been granted without notice and without Jones having been given a hearing – a fact that irks him about the nature of restraining orders and the ease with which they are granted. “It’s bizarre. The man is simply presumed guilty. It’s a case of ‘better safe than sorry’.”
Confused, but determined to get to the bottom of things, Jones contacted law firm Abrahams and Gross for advice. The attorneys took one look at the affidavit and told Jones he had a serious problem.
“They said there were no grounds for a restraining order, but that it was essential to get it dismissed as soon as possible. They said that Vermaas could try to deliberately manufacture a breach of the order which would mean I could be arrested and go to jail.
“My lawyers filed an opposing affidavit. It was quite simple – address each lie and show that the last contact you had with her was two months before she filed.”
Jones was able to provide tax records to show that, in fact, he had overpaid tax and had actually received a refund from SARS.
Jones’s answering affidavit is also in Noseweek’s possession.
Excerpts include: “The application is… ill-fated and amounts to a mockery of the true objectives of the Domestic Violence Act…Applicant and I never lived together in a relationship or partnership of any sort. [She] was merely a friend like all the other male and female friends that I have… [If] the scope of the Domestic Violence Act were to extend to an area as in this case…any confrontation in the normal scope of a friendship could be construed as domestic violence, with absurd consequences.”
His answering affidavit details how Vermaas sent “friend” requests to Jones’s friends on Facebook, which prompted him to tell her, in August 2010, that he was “permanently removing” her as a friend on Facebook. He says, “It is astonishing to note how the Applicant is distorting the true facts by using the phrase to mean that I have committed some sort of Domestic Violence against her”.
A lawyer from Abrahams and Gross attended the magistrate’s court, where he served the opposing affidavit on Vermaas.
Jones’s attorneys said they wanted to move to a court date. That was when Vermaas said that she wanted none other than Ashley Bird to represent her. Jones’s attorney reported: “[This} will be a complete disaster simply because Ms Bird will be a witness in the matter and I can see no reason why Ms Bird will want to get involved. Ms Vermaas also indicated that her main concern was that our client [Jones] was badmouthing her in and around the Jewish community from which she obtained most of her work.”
The next court date was set down, for 3 November last year, which left Jones with the interim order hanging over him and the cost of yet another court appearance.
On the return date, Vermaas showed up with an attorney – not Bird – and changed her tune once again. “Now she was asking for a restraining order requiring me to stop stalking her.”
Jones laughs bitterly: “I don’t even know where she lives or works and hadn’t seen her in 11 months. She just wanted me to be found guilty of something”.
Jones received the following confirmation from family law attorney Bertus Preller on November 3: “I wish to confirm that Ms Vermaas has withdrawn her application. Initially she wanted an apology and an agreement that you won’t stalk her in future, which we naturally refused and we demanded that the matter go to trial, however, her attorney backed off and withdrew the application.”
When the attorneys phoned him with the good news that the application had been withdrawn, Joness heaved a sigh of relief. “I thought, phew, it’s all gone away.”
Jones goes on: “So, the application is dismissed, she walks out. At this stage, one side of me is relieved, as the stalker girl is gone, but another part of me feels aggrieved. Firstly, I had incurred unnecessary legal costs – I had stopped counting at R20,000. Secondly, I was furious that an unsubstantiated order had been brought against me by ‘a woman scorned’ who lied to the court, and thirdly, I could not understand why Ashley Bird had become involved. I could not think of a single thing I had done against her. The only thing I was guilty of was doing good things for her and her family. In return, she branded me with the stigma of a domestic violence charge which never goes away. People just think that you go around beating up women.”
Two weeks ago, Jones asked a woman out. “She had heard this story that I threaten women.
He can’t imagine having a normal life and a normal relationship. “To be honest, women scare the shit out of me at the moment. I have no plans to date any women for the foreseeable future.”
Asked for comment on how on earth Jones had an interim protection order slapped against him on the basis of that application, Magistrate Van der Spuy referred Noseweek to Linda Unuvar, Judicial Head of the Family Court in Cape Town. While reluctant to comment on an individual case, Unuvar said:
“This is an affidavit. [In Danielle Vermaas’s case, it appears to have been an unsigned statement. – Ed.] If a person takes an oath and says I have been threatened, and claims that someone is calling her at all hours and upsetting her emotionally, that is harassment. If she says under oath that any act of domestic violence is committed, the court must grant an interim protection order. That includes harrassment, intimidation, unwanted calling or SMSing. Even if such harassment is the only complaint, it still warrants an order.”
Unuvar said that once the order is served on the respondent, “the respondent can come to court and say, ‘this was served on me and it is not true, I want to bring the return date forward within 24 hours’. We give him the earliest available date. If it is urgent, we will hear it”.
Unuvar said there would have been nothing stopping someone in Jones’s position from asking for a counter order against his accuser and saying that in fact, he was the one being emotionally abused. “He would have had that right. He should have anticipated the hearing and asked the court for a protection order against her. We would have had a hearing within a few days.”
Unuvar stressed that protection orders are not granted if the court is not satisfied that some form of domestic violence has been committed. “If an interim order is granted, and, on the return date, the court is not satisfied, it will not confirm the order.”
Abuse of the system is the exception, she added. “We are all trained and experienced magistrates, but we do not know whether somebody is lying under oath.”
Vermaas had this to say to Noseweek: “I have spoken to my lawyer and have decided not to comment. I am very busy and am not going to invest any time in this.”
And Ashley Bird? She agreed to meet a reporter from Noseweek at a coffee shop near her office, and arrived accompanied by her colleague, Susan Dros. The answers she gave to Noseweek’s questions do not always tally with the documentary evidence that Noseweek has seen, and were aimed at generally discrediting Jones, while minimising the interaction she’d had with Vermaas and her role in the latter’s application for the protection order.
The closest Bird had got to giving Jones an explanation for her involvement in Vermaas’s application came in a letter she wrote to his mother shortly after the order was granted. Some extracts:
“I am sure you can understand the tension it caused when he would visit my mother and she would not tell me that he’d visited. I would hear from Olivia (my mother’s domestic worker) that he had visited and what had been said. I did not make a big deal out of this as I didn’t want to upset my mother and I assumed Paul was visiting with only good intentions.
“On 28 September I phoned home only to be told by Olivia that Paul was there again and talking to my mother about me. This upset me, as my mother had mentioned the day before that having visitors was very tiring. …When I came home … my mother confirmed … that Paul had made certain derogatory remarks about Danielle, which I do not believe to be true.
“Since I had been advised by Danielle that Paul had threatened her in the past – and I now knew he was aware that she and I had made contact… I did telephone Danielle, and I told her that if Paul were to threaten her with any further legal action, she should contact me to discuss it.
“Danielle advised me that she was scared Paul would harm her and she was thinking of taking out a restraining order… I advised her (as I would with anyone) that if she genuinely felt threatened… then she should get a restraining order. She asked me to assist her and I told her that she should ask the police…
“I am certain that the contents of this email…will be upsetting to you. I have not forgotten the beautiful things that Paul has done for my family and me, but I have had equally numerous unpleasant experiences involving Paul…
“Wishing you and Paul only the best. Ashley.”
Now, she told Noseweek that he was “weird”, that friends had told her he was an alcoholic (she confirmed that he had never consumed alcohol or smoked in her presence throughout their relationship in deference to her wishes, but now believed this to be a sign that he was “obsessive”); she said he was a “stalker” since friends had told her they had seen him “lurking” near her office and she believed she had seen him “lurking” downstairs from her Sea Crest apartment; that he kept visiting her mother “day and night” just to irritate her [Ashley]; that she had shown his “Mills and Boon” manuscript to a psychologist and a psychiatrist she knew and they had both described it as “abnormal, verging on psychotic”. [She sent us a copy, which I read in lurid anticipation, only to find it pretty harmless, even good, as Mills and Boon novels go. My diagnosis: that psychologist and psychiatrist must be “verging on the psychotic” – Ed.]
But, she emphasised, what really upset her were Jones’s “endless” lies. [i.e. don’t believe anything he tells you? – Ed.]
Did she herself have any reason to believe he might be violent? “Yes.” Why? “When he got angry, he would just get up and leave.”
Later Bird would add to the list that a “good friend” had recently told her Jones had plans to abduct her.
Jones’s retort: “What am I supposed to do with her, once I’ve abducted her? It is becoming increasingly clear that in order to justify what she did last year, she has attacked my character by spreading rumours and lies about me. I have now been accused by Ashley of being a liar, capable of irrational behaviour, an alcoholic, a cheating bastard and most recently an abductor. The last is just ludicrous.”
And what about Danielle Vermaas? Noseweek asks Bird.
“She contacted me on Facebook and we arranged to meet. We compared notes and worked out that Paul had been cross-dating us. She told me Paul had sent her a “weird” sms threatening that if she did not leave me alone, I [Ashley] was going to bring court applications against her. [Vermaas has not produced any evidence to support this allegation. – Ed.]
“I told her, if he threatens you like that, rather phone and ask me what the true position is.”
Bird explained her involvement in Vermaas’s protection order. “Danielle called me on my cell phone when I was in the car rushing to downtown to attend the HPCSA hearing of Erica Grous’s former psychiatrist, Dr Davids. She told me that Paul had threatened her – I wasn’t interested how – and that she was really frightened. She asked if she could get a restraining order. I said yes, if you’re scared. She asked if I could help her, but I said no, I don’t practise criminal law and I don’t want to get involved. I wouldn’t know where to start. I suggested she go to the police. It’s the advice I would have given to anyone.”
That was it? All on the spur of the moment?
“That was it.”
Surely the evidence suggests Vermaas had been “stalking” Jones, rather than the other way around? “Yes, they’re both weird. I want nothing more to do with either of them.”
Hold that thought for a moment. Because this is when the local version of WikiLeaks – an anonymous website hacker of sorts – steps in to really stir things up. Immediately after the restraining order was served on him, Jones spent many evenings at his favourite pub mulling over the mysteries of the case with his friends. Somebody obviously knew somebody, because three months after the event, says Jones, a parcel of web printouts appeared in his postbox. They were of Facebook messages that Vermaas had sent to various friends in a plot to cause trouble between Jones and Bird.
It transpires Jones was right in suspecting that something fishy was up early in August 2010. The printouts show that on 5 August she sent a note to her friend Rasheda Samuels: “I see you are friends with Miss Bird whahahahaha” and she asks Rasheda: “so tell me – are they still a married couple ?????”.
On 9 August she writes to her friend Gustav Louw who has also befriended Bird on Facebook: “My fuck Gustav, I see you are friends with Ashley Bird!!!! This calls for an evening of champagne and snooping on her Facebook site!!!!”
The proposed evening of champagne and snooping appears to have paid off. Next day she was writing to Bird:
“I would normally not email someone I don’t know, but I had a very strange email from your boyfriend Paul tonight. He seems upset about mutual people we know on Facebook and implies that I have got something to do with this… [Jones found she was approaching Facebook friends he had in common with Bird and told her to lay off, or he’d unfriend her. – Ed.]
“What you do, your relationship and friends have nothing to do with me. I have no issues with you being his girlfriend now.
“I suppose this is as strange for you as it is for me. Good luck! Danielle.”
Every line was a lie, but Ashely took the bait.
Bird’s reply: “Dear Danielle, Paul is not my boyfriend and has not been for a while. Whilst we were together he did tell me that you wanted him back but I never commented. I would like to meet for a coffee. There is much I would like to discuss.”
Danielle’s happy reply: “I should also like to meet up with you for a chat. I am rather shocked now, but we can discuss everything when we meet.
Ashely’s reply: “Cool, Friday after work.”
That weekend Bird “unfriended” Jones on Facebook.
Also amongst the “hacker’s” printouts is the anxious message sent by Bird to Vermaas on 27 September: “Need to chat urgently.”
Two hours later Vermaas writes: “Thanks for calling me…I would like to discuss with you sometime what the procedure is with regards to getting a restraining order. I think it would be better if I get it, before he does something…I had a bad feeling ever since I met him. Let me know when you will be available to discuss the restraining order, as I am very serious about it. Perhaps it would be in your best interests to get one too!”
Bird’s reply: “I have no idea how to get a restraining order, but will find out. Let’s do coffee.”
So, not quite the rushed conversation while driving, then.
Bird told Noseweek that Jones had given lawyer Susan Dros copies of several of these illicitly obtained Facebook printouts. But, she said, she was not at liberty to show them to us as they were the subject of a police investigation. The police, she added ominously, believe they know the address from which the Facebook interloper operated.
Matters get stranger still: between February and May this year, Bird’s Facebook friends started receiving abusive messages about her, all emanating from Vermaas’s Facebook address. A sample: “How’s your stupid Jewish friend now. She’s a loser.”
She addressed a lawyer’s letter to Vermaas demanding that she immediately stop sending these messages and threatening court action.
Vermaas’s lawyers responded by saying that someone had pirated Vermaas’s Facebook site and that her friends, too, had been receiving abusive messages. And that she had already reported the matter to the police.
So who’s up to no good now? And who’s trying to mislead whom?
