Parole decision on attacker overturned

Zara Nicholson

The Department of Correctional Services has backtracked on its decision to grant parole to a repeat violent offender serving a 21 year-jail sentence after it emerged that one of his victims, photojournalist Alix Carmichele, had not been consulted.

The department also warned that prison officials found guilty of negligence during the parole hearing would face “serious disciplinary action”.

On Wednesday the Cape Times published a story about convicted rapist Francois Coetzee who was about to be granted parole without Carmichele being notified.

Coetzee is serving a 21-year-sentence for raping a teenager and for attempted murder after his brutal attack on Carmichele in 1995 while he was out on bail for the rape charge.

Carmichele, of Knysna, heard about Coetzee’s release by chance from a family friend who knew her attacker’s mother.

The Cape Times story has prompted an “immediate review” of Coetzee’s parole while senior management in the Department of Correctional Services will take over management of the parole process.

“We will definitely do an investigation into everyone involved in the process,” said Correctional Services ministerial spokesman Sonwabo Mbananga.

“We need to find out how such an oversight happened. “Anyone found guilty of wrongdoing or negligence will face disciplinary action. Even if there was no intention of malice, we need to establish who did not do their work properly because we are dealing with people’s lives,” Mbananga said.

Carmichele said earlier she was shocked to hear about Coetzee’s parole given his history of violent crimes and since she had successfully opposed his parole in 2006.

She was also outraged at the news of his possible transfer to Knysna Prison in her home town.

In 2002, she won a case in the Cape High Court against the ministers of safety and security and justice because she was attacked by a rape suspect out on bail.

After his parole was denied in 2006, Coetzee attempted to sexually assault a prison warder at Malmesbury Prison.

Asked to comment on |the about-turn yesterday, Carmichele said: “My question is still whether his other victims have been notified because a fuss is only being made now because I spent the last 15 years of my life fighting this. If I had not been in a position to find out about this by myself, then how would I have known and what would have happened?

“Yes, thank you that they are paying serious attention to it, but it only happens when someone makes a noise.”

Mbananga said that, after reading the report in the Cape Times, “the minister has immediately taken steps to request that the national commissioner reviews the matter”.

The involvement of the victim was “paramount” in considering parole placement. “It is not always possible to trace victims, but in this instance the victim, who has indicated her desire to be part of the parole hearing and who is a well-known person, should not have been difficult to trace.”

He said there would be a “full review of the parole in the interest of justice”.

Now the national commissioner for correctional services, Tom Moyane, will make a decision on Coetzee’s parole, which was due on May 20.

He said the department would comment on the exact kind of action officials would face once they established “the extent of oversight and dereliction of duty”.

Parole board officials only have one record of trying to call Carmichele, in August, and this one attempt has been blasted by the senior management as “no excuse” for excluding the victim in the parole hearing.

Coetzee, who has served two thirds of his sentence, was transferred from Malmesbury Prison to Helderstroom Prison in Caledon.