Delay in Marli’s curatorship hearing

MARLI van Breda‚ who heard less than a week ago that her brother Henri had received three life sentences for murdering her parents and older brother Rudi, and an additional 15 years for attempting to kill her‚ will have to wait to hear whether her curatorship under Advocate Louise Buikman will continue.

This is despite the fact that she is an adult.

Marli, who was seriously injured and left with retrograde amnesia by the brutal axe attack, was just 16 at the time and turns 20 this year.

A report was scheduled to be heard in chambers in the Cape Town High Court yesterday, but the hearing was postponed to July 31.

Prosecutor Susan Galloway‚ summarising the hardships faced by Marli in court last week ahead of the sentencing‚ said media attention was only one small part of the hardships the survivor had faced.

“She was a vulnerable schoolgirl who now has to grow up alone‚ knowing that her brother killed her parents and sibling.

“She has lost her family‚ home‚ and everything else‚ and nothing will ever be the same again for her‚” Galloway said.

Marli was the only survivor of the gruesome triple axe killing at the De Zalze estate on January 27 2015.

Within minutes of the news spreading across the world‚ her privacy became a subject of major concern to her extended family.

Galloway said in court earlier that Henri had left her to suffer for three hours before calling for help on that gruesome morning.

That she did survive was not due to mercy but a miracle.

She lived – but not to tell the tale, as the attack left her with amnesia.