‘He discarded the pick handle and lunged at her with a knife’

ON AUGUST 6 two decades ago Alix Carmichele walked into a friend’s home just outside Knysna. An intruder lying in wait started beating her with a pickaxe handle.

Francois Coetzee repeatedly struck her head and face, and broke her arm.

Court papers detailing the attack, which became a mammoth court battle that saw Carmichele go as far as the Constitutional Court in her quest for justice, said Coetzee 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, managed to escape. At the time of the attack, Coetzee had been out on recognisance after trying to rape a girl some five months previously while walking her home after a dance in the area.

He was also facing two suspended sentences for breaking into a house and fondling a woman while she slept.

After these incidents, a friend of Carmichele who lives in the area told police she did not think Coetzee should be on the streets, and that she was afraid he would attack again.

Court papers show that four days before her attack Carmichele and the friend spoke to a prosecutor about their concerns regarding Coetzee.

In the year following her attack, Carmichele sued the ministers of justice and of safety and security in the Western Cape High Court because she felt the police and prosecutors in Knysna had failed to protect her by not detaining Coetzee.

But the claim failed and Carmichele took the case to the Supreme Court of Appeal, where it failed again in 2001. However, 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, which Carmichele won. The State tried to appeal, but failed. In April 2008 Carmichele was back in court trying to claim R4.6 million in damages. In September that year she was awarded about a quarter of that, R1m. Coetzee was released from prison in October last year.