Cape Town - The news that one of the men convicted of raping and killing her then 14-year-old daughter, Valencia, has been granted parole has opened up old wounds for Sylvia Farmer.
Her daughter was gang-raped and stabbed 53 times in a vacant house in Eerste River in 1999 and she said it is something she is not able to move on from.
Russel van Wyk, 32, who is being held at the Drakenstein medium security correctional centre, was granted parole last Wednesday.
Sylvia said she often thinks about the person her daughter would have turned out to be and she finds it unfair that her killers get to carry on in society.
“He killed and raped a child. Why must he get parole? He must serve his whole sentence and he should have spent all those years in jail. You cannot forget something like that. Every time something like what happened to Anene Booysen happens it brings it all back. It also affects me a lot because I know what it is like. I know the trauma they went through.”
She said she had never seen remorse from the men and it was very hard for her to move past what happened as Valencia was her only child at the time.
“She could have gone far in life, there were many things she wanted to do. She thought of becoming a lawyer or a teacher.”
She now has a 24-year-old son and said she always feels she has to protect him.
Department of Corrections spokesperson Simphiwe Xako said the parole board approved Van Wyk’s release after “considering all the relevant facts”.
Van Wyk still had just over five years to serve. The conditions of his parole include house arrest, high-risk supervision where he will be monitored once a week by Correctional Services, finding employment, not committing any crimes and also being prohibited from using alcohol and drugs.
He is due to be released in July.
Valencia died at the Tygerberg Hospital after managing to tell police who her attackers were. Six men were initially arrested. Two were given life sentences.