Judy van Niekerk – abused and enslaved by her father for 20 years – eventually went public and testified against him in an Irish court. In the 10 years since, she has made a new life as a winemaker in South Africa
WHEN YOU LOOK at the milestones in Judy van Niekerk’s life you, it quickly becomes clear that this is a woman who marches to the beat of her own drum. You’ll find proof in KwaZulu-Natal province, in South Africa, where the 42-year-old Irishwoman, who was born Judy Walsh, and her husband, Tiny, own an award-winning five-year-old wine estate.
Tiny says his wife was the initial driving force in the winemaking. “She’s not hampered by the mental barriers that stop most people from taking on daunting challenges. She believes you can achieve what you want to,” he says.
But only when you hear the story of her early life in Ireland can you fully appreciate her attitude.
Her formative years were beset by sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her father, who virtually enslaved her. In his care as a teenager – he got custody of her in 1979 – she rarely got the chance to attend school or make friends. Instead she was subjected to the life of a loner, as he repeatedly moved the family around Ireland, from one place to another.
After she fled to England in her early teens he persuaded her to return, but eventually she left again, fearing for her life. In 1989 she left England for South Africa, where, at 22, she says she felt “at home for the first time”.
During those first few years she embraced her new surroundings, becoming an international finswimmer and enthusiastic participant in extreme sports. Life was better in South Africa, but the effect of the abuse started to take its toll. Soon she was fighting for survival again.
“Eventually my life collapsed around me,” she says. “I began to overdose on drugs, and my friends became very worried, as I kept landing up in the hospital intensive-care unit. But I started to go through stringent therapy, and once I found the right therapist the sessions began to work wonders. I took my last overdose in April 1999, and when I woke up I knew it was over, that I was on the road to recovery.”
While coming to terms with her past Walsh visited Ireland, where one day she walked into Harcourt Street Garda Station, in Dublin, and told a detective about the abuse.
Noel Walsh, her father, who had an address at Tritonville Road in Sandymount, was arrested. He eventually pleaded guilty to three counts of rape and two of indecent assault against his daughter. The prosecuting counsel told the court these were sample charges from the 30 on the indictment.
Rather than protect her anonymity, which most victims choose to do, Walsh showed her tendency to go against the flow by asking the court to name her father, saying such abuses might not occur as frequently if they were given more publicity. “Incest and rape requires more exposure,” she said at the time.
TODAY, JUDY AND TINYvan Niekerk's Stables Wine Estate is unique among South Africa's hundreds of wine farms, as it is the first successful commercial vineyard established in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), corralled between the Drakensberg mountain range and the Indian Ocean, to the country's northeast. Its very existence goes against the prevailing trend in South Africa's wine industry, as nearly every other wine farm in the country is located in the Cape, the southern region that surrounds Cape Town.
“We like wine, and the idea of owning a wine farm appealed, but the vineyards around the Cape, where we lived for many years, are extremely expensive,” she says. “However, Tiny got a three-month IT contract in KZN in 2003, so we ended up looking around the province. An estate agent showed us a small stud farm in the midlands we thought had potential, and we decided to buy it. The purchase was very impulsive. We did not know the first thing about making wine, but it felt right.
“People in the industry told us it would never work because the climate in KZN was wrong for grapes. But we believed their attitude was more about trying to protect their businesses in the Cape than sound advice. So we got books on winemaking, planted our vines and set about proving them wrong.”
The passing of time has shown the van Niekerks’ expensive leap of faith to be well judged: their business is growing and KZN has been designated a new Wine of Origin region because of their efforts.
When I ask van Niekerk if she knows what influenced her positive approach to life, she traces it back to her darkest days. “You know, because I was imprisoned by my father, and never had the chance to go to school, I didn’t become socialised by society, like most people do,” she says. “The mental barriers you pick up in school, like a girl can’t be this or do that, I was never subjected to. I guess I have never been conditioned, so I’m a nonconformist. There are no barriers in my brain, and within reason I believe I can achieve my goals.”
This absence of conditioning is helping van Niekerk’s efforts to launch a wine project in KZN that involves local government, the king of the Zulu nation, Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu, and some of the province’s poorest residents. The plan, which is still in its embryonic stage, is to establish vineyards across the Zulu tribal lands, to ensure that the indigenous population has a stake in the new provincial industry.
“I approached local government two years ago, and their agricultural economists have approved our plans,” van Niekerk says. “We are working to clear four sites now for planting, but our ambition is to have 10,000 hectares of vineyards in five years, which would provide work for 100,000 people.
“Initially the local people involved will own a percentage of each vineyard, but eventually ownership will be transferred over to them when they have the skills to succeed. We want the industry to grow in KZN and for others to benefit as well.”
Rape, beatings, threats: The Judy Walsh case
Mr Justice Paul Carney, the judge who sent Judy van Niekerk’s father, Noel Walsh, to prison for 15 years in 2000 after he admitted sexually and physically abusing her over a 20-year period, said the case was one of the worst of that nature the Central Criminal Court had ever heard. According to court reports, the abuse included rape, sexual assault, beatings and threats involving knives and guns. “I had no right to life. I existed only to make his life easier,” Judy told the court.
In a statement to gardaí in 1996, her father described his relationship with Judy as “very special”. He said: “Judy was my whole life, and when she left me my whole life fell apart. I will never forgive her.”
Noel Walsh served four years of his jail term before dying. Van Niekerk visited him on his deathbed. “Whilst he still remained unremorseful and believed he had done nothing wrong, I gained enormously from this , in that I saw him as the ugly person he was and not the frightful monster of my childhood,” she said. “All my fears about him and the guilt I experienced in being responsible for putting him away flew out the window.”
