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Sadomasochism, a gun obsession and taking part in traditional female genital mutilation rituals – that’s what alleged mutilator Peter Frederiksen revealed to two Danish journalists who he had asked to write a book about his life.
Three months before he was arrested, Frederiksen made astonishing revelations on 12 hours of video, now given to the police.
On Friday, the man accused of stashing female genitalia in his freezer was denied bail by the Bloemfontein Magistrates’ Court.
He faces a string of charges, including contravening medical laws, producing and distributing child pornography, and bigamy.
He is also being investigated for conspiring to murder his estranged wife, Matseliso Molise, the mother of his two small boys, who was gunned down in Maseru three weeks ago.
Last week Frederiksen denied all charges against him and told the court that it was all his wife’s fault: that she took the thousands of pictures of naked and mutilated women found in his Bloemfontein townhouse, and was involved with some “witch doctor”.
But in June, Frederiksen (63) told the Danish journalists, who asked not to be named, about
his obsession with guns and women, and
claimed his first genital mutilation victim was a satanic “priestess” in Denmark who asked him
to “cut her”.
He speaks affectionately about his upbringing in Gammel Holte on the outskirts of Copenhagen in 1952. In the footage, which City Press has seen and obtained transcripts of, Frederiksen’s eyes light up when he speaks about guns and how his grandfather called him “gun crazy”.
He speaks of his love for good wine and Champagne. Despite 10 years in South Africa, he says he still loves traditional Danish food, and enjoys a home-cooked lunch with beer and a few shots of schnapps on the side every day.
But his demeanour changes when he speaks of his wife, and how pretty and naive she was when he met her. He speaks of meeting many women and describes them in detail, dwelling on their looks and body shape. He also boasts of how he was the “only man” to have been invited to participate in “female circumcision in the mountains of Lesotho”.
Frederiksen says his interest in mutilation began after he joined a well-known Danish sadomasochists’ club, SMiL, 20 years ago.
“There is another chapter which started many years ago and I don’t think I should talk about it. It’s in connection with female circumcision. It’s very popular down here – this thing of circumcising women,” he said.
“They are not circumcised here like they are in Egypt or Somalia ... There is a big tradition of this in Lesotho and some parts of South Africa.”
He says he met a satanic priestess who wanted to undergo female genital mutilation and “convinced” him to perform the procedure on her.
“I said I had no idea how to do this and I thought it would bleed a lot. She convinced me to do it,” he said.
Frederiksen claims to have known infamous Danish plastic surgeon Jørn Ege Siana – known as Dr Penis for his enlargement procedures – who he says taught him how to perform the surgery in a “few lessons”.
“I used a local anaesthetic, and it went well. There wasn’t much blood there and I had something special to stop the bleeding, and after about 10 days she was healed with the help of a special cream. She was very happy with the results.”
Married with two sons and a daughter at the time, Frederiksen ran his family thatching business and his own arms dealership.
After he was arrested a third time on firearms charges, he fled to South Africa and Lesotho.
In Lesotho, he claims, he met an elderly woman who took him to the mountains to show him “a ritual young girls go through to become women”.
“I’m probably the only white man who has seen a female circumcision in the mountains of Lesotho. The lady who invited me asked me if I have any experience with cutting. I told her yes and I could even help them because they don’t use anaesthetic; they just cut.”
What follows is an increasingly bizarre account in which he claims he was asked to assist in performing the surgery. After the procedure is performed on up to 15 young girls, he claimed, all the body parts are boiled with herbs, which the girls then consume.
“They will have resistance in their bodies for the rest of their lives. This is also very popular among Xhosa women,” he told his interviewers.
He did not reveal anything about how the genitals came to be found in his freezer.
Frederiksen says little about his wife and children in Denmark.
He does say his “first love” was a Kenyan woman he met 40 years ago while working for a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) he does not name.
“I always wanted kids in Africa somewhere. When I lived in Kenya, I had a relationship with a lovely woman for over two years. She was studying to become a nurse. When the NGO cancelled the contract and I couldn’t stay in Kenya any more, my father said I should go home and work at the family thatching company,” he said.
Magistrate Marlene Marais ruled that Frederiksen did not have sufficient ties to South Africa and there was a likelihood that he would intimidate witnesses after the state heard that he had made a number of threatening phone calls to some of them.
“The court is not amused by the attitude displayed by the applicant,” said Marais, who added that he had “multiple travelling documents” and “no regard for the South African justice system”.
The case was postponed to January 13.
