Pretoria - Advocate Barbie’s hopes for an early release from jail have been dashed. The Pretoria High Court this week struck from the roll her application for a review and setting aside Correctional Services parole board’s refusal not to convert the rest of her prison sentence into correctional supervision.
Cezanne Visser - who became known as Advocate Barbie - turned to the court on Wednesday in an urgent bid for freedom.
The court, however, held that the matter was not urgent and that Visser had not exhausted all her internal remedies.
Visser was ordered to pay the department’s legal costs.
Correctional Services spokesman for Gauteng Ofentse Morwane said: “This implies that the offender will continue with her prison term at Pretoria Central Women’s Prison.”
He said Visser had appeared before the parole board for the Pretoria management area on August 7 and asked that the rest of her jail term be converted into correctional supervision.
However, the board found that she was not at this stage a suitable candidate to serve the rest of her sentence outside jail.
In her application to the high court to overturn this decision, Visser based her case mainly on facts in law.
These related to the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act on the remainder of a sentence which could be served outside jail, after the offender had served a part in jail.
If released under this act, it could mean that Visser would have to serve the rest of her sentence under house arrest and other conditions stipulated by the department.
Visser has by now served two years and five months of her seven-year sentence.
Acting Judge Chris Eksteen sentenced her in February 2010, but she went to jail some three months later, after a failed appeal bid.
The lawyer representing two of Visser’s victims - who were in a children’s home when they fell prey to the sexual assaults of her and her former lover Dirk Prinsloo - was extremely surprised to hear about the urgent application.
Counsel Pieter van R Coetzee told the Pretoria News that he was never told of such an application.
This was contrary to the order made by Judge Eksteen at the time of sentencing Visser, he said. At the time, the judge said the victims had to be consulted before Visser was possibly released on parole.
“I knew nothing of this application. I did not get prior notice of it. Correctional Services and Visser’s legal team know we will have objections if she is granted freedom at this stage and that we have to give our input in this regard.”
There were several procedures that would have to be set in place with regard to the victims before Visser’s freedom could be considered, Van R Coetzee said.
He was still awaiting an answer from Correctional Services after his request for further particulars on her parole board bid to be placed under correctional supervision.
“I take note of the application, and the finding by the judge is, in my respectful opinion, correct.”
Visser’s lawyer, Llewellyn Curlewis, could not be reached for comment on the way forward.
Pretoria News