Earlier this week TV and radio personality Penny Lebyane shared a shocking experience she once had with an ex in the entertainment industry, and she tells DRUM she meant every word.
In graphic detail, Penny told social media followers how she once found explicit images of an underaged girl on her unnamed ex’s laptop, and how she knows he preyed on young girls and students while they were dating.
“It was always high school girls and university girls at times in school uniforms. Easy prey I guess,"Penny wrote.
“I had used the laptop to complete a work task [and] got curious. l was young. It ruined me, it was sickening,” the post read.
She said she stopped drinking a certain type of cooldrink after she saw the gruesome pictures.
“I stopped drinking this drink because of the pictures I found in his computer of an under-aged girl with the bottle in her private parts which he took with his camera. I was so shocked, hurt and traumatized. l deleted all the naked girls’ pictures he kept in the files. I will never forget,” she wrote.
In the past Penny has been candid about her personal life, including her struggles with postnatal depression.
“It seems that the only time people take you seriously, you need to be graphic about your experiences,” she tells DRUM.
Penny says her outburst was triggered by the amount of abuse she has seen aimed at women recently. “I’m about nation-building and not the frivolous things of the entertainment industry,” she says.
“His friends know what he did to me, but they’re too afraid to speak because of the power he holds. We all know someone abusive, promiscuous or hungry for power and we have never called them out. I wanted to help women speak up,” she says.
“I’m not a cop-out, I meant what I said,” she adds.
The Massiv Metro presenter says women in entertainment are too afraid to call their abusers out.“I’m not on radio and TV to be pretty. I use my platforms to develop people and if it means sometimes being vulnerable and sharing my experiences, then that’s what I will do,” she says.Penny says in the past she has lost out on work because she’s vocal.
“I didn’t get slots on radio shows and certain TV shows because men wouldn’t even think of asking me to try and sleep my way to the top – they know I would call them out on their behaviour,” Penny says. She adds that for 18 years she survived on small gigs.
“I’ve learnt to live within my means. I can live off R60k and be okay. I’m not selling a lifestyle. I’m empowering people,” she adds.
Although Penny has never been physically abused, the amount of emotional abuse she endured was more than enough.
“I have endured a lot of emotional abuse from one particular individual and I didn’t mention names. So, if someone wants to come to get at me with a lawsuit it’s fine. South Africa is a free country after all and no one will silence me,” she says.
