Envy drove Louise Bowker to steal more than a million rand from her employer over a two-year period.
Envy drove Louise Bowker to steal more than a million rand from her employer over a two-year period.
In her guilty plea, this week, Grahamstown vet Phillip Gilfillan's former bookkeeper cited "a loss of impulse control… pathologically low self-esteem, subjective failure and inadequacy issues and… a morbid envy of her friends", compounded by post-natal depression and work stress.
Bowker was convicted in the Port Elizabeth Commercial Crimes Court on Monday 3 June.
She claimed that a deteriorated mental state brought on by pressure at work and post-natal depression led her to steal R1 412 899.43 from Gilfillan between August 2008 and December 2010.
She said she'd felt as though she were unable to stop stealing due to an increasing loss of impulse control, and therefore made available incriminating bank statements she had previously hidden at home.
She realised this was the only way to put an end to her compulsive theft.
Struggling to cope with her family and career stress since 2008, Bowker said in her plea, she had started to immerse herself in horseriding.
This, she claimed, provided a potential escape from life’s pressures.
According to the plea the majority of the money Bowker stole was used on horseriding, buying horses and equipment, and workshops and treatment for her own horses.
She paid suppliers from the business bank account and from Gilfillan's personal bank account without permission to do so, the court documents state.
Bowker will be sentenced on 30 August.
Read more about what happened in 2011 by clicking on the related links below.
More details of the judgment and the case to follow online and in Friday's print edition.
