I refuse to live in fear - attack victim
Garden Route woman speaks out as sex fiend freed from jail
MORE than two decades after notorious Knysna violent sex criminal Francois Coetzee’s reign of terror in the holiday town ended when he was jailed, he is once again roaming the streets. But his most high profile victim – whom he attempted to kill and who successfully sued the state for failing to protect her as he was out on bail for an identical charge at the time – says she refuses to live in fear of her assailant.
Coetzee, 42, was released from the Knysna Correctional Centre yesterday after spending more than 19 years behind bars for a string of violent crimes against women, including attempted rape, indecent assault, assault and the 1995 attempted murder of photographer Alix Carmichele, whom he at- tacked with a pickaxe handle and stabbed with a knife at a friend’s home in Noetzie.
Carmichele suffered a fractured skull, broken arm and knife wounds to the chest and had to undergo several surgeries after the attack.
He was also found guilty of the attempted rape of a 17-year-old school friend at a dance at the Hornlee Hotel in Knysna in 1994.
Coetzee was also convicted of indecent assault and housebreaking after he had climbed into the bedroom of a 25-year-old acquaintance whom he then “indecently fondled” in her sleep, before she awoke.
Carmichele said yesterday she was no longer afraid of the man who almost took her life.
“He has robbed me of too much already and I refuse to allow him to rob me of even more. I refuse to live in fear,” Carmichele, who still lives on the Garden Route, said yesterday.
“I woke up this morning [yesterday] and thought about what I would do if I had spent the last 20 years in prison and then I thought of what he might do.”
Carmichele said that although she had let go of the fear of Coetzee, she had remained “hyper vigilant” after the attack.
She said she believed Coetzee would soon “misbehave” and end up behind bars again and that he had proven her theory during a recent short-lived stint out on parole.
Coetzee was released on parole in October last year, but was arrested in May for contravening his parole conditions after he was caught – by means of his electronic monitoring ankle bracelet – near the home of one of his victims.
This meant Coetzee had to serve the rest of his sentence behind bars, which ended yesterday.
Western Cape regional Correctional Services spokeswoman Carla Williams confirmed his release.
Carmichele said she did not believe he was rehabilitated, despite his claims of being a changed man.
“Unfortunately this will cost someone [possibly another victim] very dearly,” she said.
Just before his release in October, Coetzee accompanied Department of Correctional Services area commissioner Ndileka Booi to a matric exams prayer meeting at the Khayalethu Community Hall in Knysna where he addressed high school pupils about his past “mistakes” and told them how he was now a “different person”.
Several attempts to contact Coetzee and his mother, Annie Coetzee, yesterday were unsuccessful.
Shortly after his release on parole, he was also arrested after he was found walking along the N2 near Knysna with a panga.
He was, however, released thereafter as the Department of Justice found the circumstances were not a crime.