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Open in new tab I’m obsessed with looking at Oscar… watching all the dramatic vomiting, the crying. Seeing the hero who has become the devil
Grieving take her eyes off Oscar Pistorius June Steenkamp cannot ON THE VERDICT – even though she goes through hell every time she watches one of his dramatic courtroom outbursts.
The heartbroken mother has sat in dignified silence for weeks while the Blade Runner athlete accused of murdering her daughter Reeva collapses in hysterics, vomits, retches and puts his fingers in his ears.
She has endured endless bloody pictures of the crime scene, the weapon and, horrifyingly, Reeva’s catastrophic head wound.
But it has left her haunted by one burning question – is he acting? June has exclusively revealed to the Mirror how she studies Pistorius’s every move in an attempt to find the truth. She admitted: “It was a big thing for me to go to the trial in the first place and face up to what is going on.
“It’s very traumatic when certain things come up. This is my child – and I must listen to the graphic detail. “I look at Oscar the whole time, to see how he is coping, how he is behaving. I’m obsessed with looking at him, it’s just instinctive, I can’t explain it.
“I keep thinking, ‘let me see how he’s taking this’. He has been very dramatic, the vomiting and crying.”
She added: “I think he’s just about keeping himself together. I don’t know whether he’s acting. Most of the time he’s on his cell phone or looking down at papers or writing notes.”
Talking about that very public apolog y from the Paralympics champion, June said: “It left me unmoved. I knew it was coming. My lawyers had prepared me for it.
“I cried for the first time, ‘Yes’ , but not because he apologised, because of the suffering and agony that my darling daughter went through and because I will never have her again.”
She admitted it has been an ordeal hearing the gruesome details of Reeva’s death, as expert after expert discussed blood spatter, flesh-tearing bullets and whether or not she was capable of screaming before she died.
As the trial has gone on, she said, Pistorius’s family have slowly started to make overtures to her. His sister Aimee handed her a note to say how “sorry” the family was for her loss and inviting her to “reach out” to them for support. But June, 67 d is m i s s e d t h e approach and said: “It won’t bring my daughter back.”
She added: “We just want to know the truth.” June, who had never met 29-year-old Reeva’s celebrity boyfriend, wears a picture of her model and law graduate daughter on her lapel in court.
She has previously criticised Pistorius for failing to acknowledge her on the first day of the trial. She said: “He did eventually l o o k at me. My presence unnerves him, I’m sure of it. He’s answerable to me. He looked at me and said, ‘Good morning, Mrs Steenkamp’. I never answered, I just nodded my head.
“It was for him to see me, nothing to do with what I’m seeing and what I’m feeling, do you understand? I don’t know the man. All I know is what he’s done. “He must see me there in the court, he must feel my eyes boring into him, I think it makes a lot of difference.
“I do look at him too much, maybe. I like to see how he is reacting. I can see him very clearly, even without my glasses – he’s the only one I can see, he’s right in front of me.” June winced as she recalled one particular picture during the trial that “wiped her out”. She cannot bring herself to describe it, but said: “It was just horrendous, I will see that picture for the rest of my life. Until the day I die, I promise you.”
As the world watches her every move, June is hurting. She is just not showing it – in complete contrast to Pistorius. She explained: “I keep it all in and when I get back to the hotel it all comes out and I break down. “I start crying out, crying all the tears and pain I’ve held inside in court. I feel very vulnerable. The whole world is watching you and you don’t want people to see you when you’re in pain.
“I don’t want to be crying in public. I’m a private person. I like to keep my feelings to myself. “I’m being strong for Reeva, I have to be there. It’s hard for me to do it, but I’m representing my child. “I’m there for her, as much as it’s hell for me, I know that I have to be there, I’m compelled to be there.”
June often attends court with Reeva’s cousin Kim, who was very close to her daughter. She said: “Kim looks after me like I’m her mother.” But June has had to endure the daily nightmare without husband Barry, 69, who has been too ill to travel the 700 miles to Pretoria from their home in Port Elizabeth.
But now the devoted dad has vowed to risk his life to be at his wife’s side. He said: “I’ve had a stroke and they advised me not to fly, but I want to go. I want to be in court. June doesn’t want me to, but I’m making my own plans to get there.” June fears the stress of the trial could kill her husband, a professional race horse trainer – even though she understands why he wants to make the trip.
She admitted they both shared a deep feeling of helplessness at the thought of their daughter’s final agony. “That’s all I think about when I’m on my own,” she said. “It haunts me… we couldn’t help her, we couldn’t do anything. “I imagine how she must have been in terror and pain and suffering, devastated by what was going on. I relive that scene in the bathroom and it’s changed me so much, made me harder.” She added: “My daughter is dead. He killed her. He shot her till she was dead in that toilet, in that bathroom, so how am I ever going to feel better about it? “She was the most wonderful, beautiful person, inside and out, and she was everything to Barry and me – our lives are destroyed. At the moment I’m just surviving, trying to make it through each day, I pray a lot and don’t feel God has let me down. If you live with God you take the good with the bad. What am I praying for? Strength.
“I’m representing Reeva at the trial. People want to see me there. Also suddenly I’ve just got strength from somewhere and the will to be there every day, because it’s not easy.” June insisted: “I don’t care what happens to Oscar, I don’t even care if he goes free. All I know is that he has to stand up to what he’s done and – if he has to – pay for it.
“What difference is it going to make to me if he goes to prison for 25 years or is allowed to walk free? No one can tell me how I should feel, and those are my feelings. “I’m not a person who wants to punish him. I want my daughter back, but it’s never going to happen.” Barry added: “I don’t need revenge, just the truth.” But June said of their daughter’s killer: “He has an aggressive persona, he’s used to having people adore him, so it must be pretty different for him now. “He’s been spoilt by other people, that’s why he struts around and looks superior. He’s gone from hero to devil.