SYDNEY, 13 August 2003 — A South African woman who has accused Australian Test cricketer Shane Warne of harassment said yesterday she has received threatening phone calls telling her to keep quiet about the saga and fears for her life.
“The reason I’ve decided to come forward is because I fear that something bad is going to happen to me because of the terrible phone calls I’ve been receiving,” Helen Cohen Alon told Australia’s Channel Nine from South Africa.
Colen Alon, who is from Johannesburg, has already said she has been offered 200,000 rand (US$28,000) by an associate of Warne to keep quiet about their relationship in a series of threatening phone calls and text messages. The 45-year-old divorced mother-of-three said yesterday she would flee South Africa because of her fears, if anyone stumped up her asking price of US $250,000 to reveal the whole truth about the Warne allegations.
“What really shocked me into reality was when I read the newspaper one morning about Hansie Cronje and that maybe he could have been murdered.
“I feel threatened at the moment and that’s why I believe the whole truth should come out.” Cohen Alon denied a suggestion she was crazy and said it was not her intention to ruin Warne’s career.
The Sydney Morning Herald said yesterday she had offered to sell her story to the paper for US$250,000.
The Herald said it declined the offer but published an interview with her.
Cohen Alon said she was not trying to blackmail Warne, telling the Herald: “Why would I want to blackmail Shane Warne when he was a friend of mine?
“Why doesn’t he just come out with the truth that he did harass me. Why doesn’t he do that, and that we were friends in the beginning? And I really liked him, and I still do. He’s a fantastic guy. There’s nothing wrong with him. “It’s just that you cannot get away with things that you try and do to a woman all the time.”
