Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Serial sex offender returns to crime scene
ONE OF South Africa’s most notorious serial sex offenders has sparked fear in Knysna, where he has a history of attacking women, after being arrested this week for carrying a panga – and then allowed to go free.
Francois Coetzee, 42, was central to one of the most high-profile court cases concerning the protection of a woman – Alix Carmichele, who went to the highest court to hold the state accountable for failing to protect her from him.
Coetzee, whose convictions include attempted murder and who attacked a woman warder while imprisoned, was released on October 27 after spending about half his life behind bars.
He is living just outside Knysna, the same area where he previously targeted women, and was arrested with the panga on Sunday on a footpath in the town.
Southern Cape police spokeswoman Captain Bernadine Steyn said, without naming Coetzee, that a man had been released from custody following the panga incident.
“The case was not placed on the court roll.
“The Department of Justice indicated that the circumstances of the incident do not constitute a crime in terms of the Dangerous Weapons Act,” she told Weekend Argus.
Photographer Carmichele, whom Coetzee was convicted of trying to murder in the secluded area of Noetzie just outside Knysna in 1995, is now fearful that he will commit another crime.
“I actually think he’s going to come after me,” she said. “It’s history repeating itself.” Carmichele said she understood Coetzee had been released into a form of house arrest which included strict conditions, and was being monitored with an electronic ankle bracelet.
She said that it was her view that Coetzee had broken one of the conditions of his release from prison by walking around with the panga.
The Correctional Services Department had not replied to queries from Weekend Argus by publication time yesterday.
In the 1995 attack on Carmichele, Coetzee used a pickaxe handle and knife, breaking her arm and stabbing her left breast so viciously that the blade buckled against her breastbone.
At the time of that attack, Coetzee was facing a separate rape charge, and had a suspended sentence for indecent assault.
Carmichele then sued the ministers of justice and of safety and security for negligence, for allowing Coetzee to be released from custody.
This week she said: “I think that the story isn’t complete.
“I’ve spent 15 years of my life fighting this thing. For what?”
Coetzee was previously up for parole; in 2006 his release was opposed, the same year that he attacked a woman warder while serving part of his sentence at Malmesbury Prison.
At the time, prison authorities said it appeared Coetzee had planned to sexually assault her.
Then, about four years ago, Carmichele, along with two of Coetzee’s other victims, made representations opposing his release on parole.
Yesterday Weekend Argus contacted Coetzee’s mother Annie Coetzee, who said her son was “okay”.
When she was asked about his most recent arrest, she said: “No comment.”
Despite Coetzee’s background, a few days before his release Correctional Services Southern Cape area commissioner Ndileka Booi was quoted as saying that he had become a role model to other inmates.
Coetzee was also quoted in that article. “I know people will never trust me again when I am out of the prison; they will always look at whatever I’m doing, even though I am now a different person.
“Spending 21 years in jail was not easy. I don’t have family or children, I don’t have a place to stay, I have never worked and I have never even had a bank account in my life,” he was quoted as saying during an address to matric pupils in the area.
Court papers paint a picture of a troubled Coetzee who repeatedly targeted women in increasingly violent attacks.
The papers said Coetzee had sung in a choir “that devoted its time to entertaining ill people”, and spent hours reading at home.
But he had problems “of a sexual nature” from around age 10, and in his early teens sexually molested a relative.
His mother had tried to get advice
from their doctor.
The papers said that on the night of June 3, 1994, Coetzee, then 20, climbed into the bedroom of an acquaintance, 25, and “indecently fondled her until she awoke and gave the alarm”.
In September that year Coetzee was convicted of indecent assault and housebreaking, charges to which he pleaded guilty, and was handed two sentences, suspended for four years.
Six months later, according to the court papers, Coetzee tried to rape a 17-year-old school friend after a dance at the Hornlee Hotel in Knysna.
He tried to kiss her, but when she resisted, he “threw her to the ground and repeatedly punched and kicked her”.
“He dragged her into tall grass and ripped off her clothes. He forcibly held her down by sitting on her while he repeatedly punched her in the face, throttled her and bit her. He threatened to kill her. She eventually lost consciousness… Whether in fact he did rape (her) after she lost consciousness was not established,” the papers said.
Coetzee appeared in court on a rape charge, but his previous convictions were not placed on the record and he was released.
Court papers said that on March 13, 1995, Coetzee tried to kill himself at his mother’s Noetzie home.
He was hospitalised, then released back into her care.
The following day Coetzee was interviewed by a senior State prosecutor in Knysna.
“He told her that he had a problem because when he saw a girl in a bathing suit he could not control himself. When that happened he would run home and masturbate. He said that this condition had begun when he was about 10 years old,” the papers said.
Coetzee was referred to Valkenberg Hospital for 30 days of observation, and later released.
In April 1995 he pleaded not guilty to charges relating to the attack on the girl after the dance. The case was postponed and Coetzee was not detained.
On August 6, 1995, he attacked Carmichele in her friend’s home.
That same friend had previously complained repeatedly to a senior prosecutor about Coetzee, but the prosecutor had “claimed she was powerless to do anything about Coetzee”.
In court in September 1995, Coetzee admitted to assaulting the girl after the dance, but denied raping her.
He was convicted of attempted rape and sentenced to seven years in prison.
In December 1995 he was sentenced to an effective 12-and-a-half years in prison for the attack on Carmichele.