Victim of vicious attack endured long fight for justice

TWO DECADES ago, on August 6, Alix Carmichele walked into a friend’s home, just outside Knysna, where an intruder was lying in wait.

The intruder, Francois Coetzee, beat her repeatedly with a pickaxe handle, striking her head and face and breaking her arm.

Court papers detailing the attack, which became the subject of a long court battle in which Carmichele went as far as the Constitutional Court in her quest for justice, said Coetzee had dragged her around the house.

“He discarded the pick handle and lunged at her with a knife. He stabbed her left breast and the blade of the knife buckled as it hit her breastbone,” the papers said. Carmichele, then 28, escaped.

At the time, Coetzee had been released on his own cognisance after trying, about five months earlier, to rape a 14year-old girl while walking her home after a dance.

He was also facing two suspended sentences for having broken into a woman’s house 14 months previously and fondled her while she slept.

In the year after the attack, Carmichele sued the minister of justice and MEC for safety and security in the Western Cape High Court, claiming the police and prosecutors in Knysna had failed to protect her by not detaining Coetzee.

But her court bid failed and she took the case to the Supreme Court of Appeal, where it failed again in 2001.

That same year the Constitutional Court ruled in her favour. Previous court orders were set aside and another leg of the legal battle ensued. The case was referred back to the Western Cape High Court and Carmichele won.

In 2008, Carmichele was back in the high court fighting for R4.6 million in damages. She was awarded R1m. Coetzee left prison on October 27.