Durban — A convicted child molester will remain behind bars to serve out the rest of his sentence. This is after his second attempt at release on parole proved unsuccessful.
Larry Du Plessis Zwiegelaar, who was sentenced in 2013 for the indecent assault and rape of his step-daughters between 1991 and 2000, first applied for parole in 2020. However, one of his victims, Candice Bowman, convinced the parole board at Westville Prison through her testimony that her step-father was undeserving of parole.
The 63-year-old man was sentenced by the Scottburgh High Court to an accumulative term of 40 years, of which 15 years was jail time.
The sisters broke their silence about the abuse in 2010, and during the trial, the court had heard how Zwiegelaar had gone to the extent of drilling a hole to put a two-way mirror between the bathroom and toilet so he could watch them.
The abuse started when Bowman was seven and it went on for years.
His parole hearing was on Monday, and it had to be virtual as he had since been moved from Westville Prison to Leeuwkop Prison, outside Johannesburg.
Bowman was unaware that Zwiegelaar had moved from Westville prison until she received a letter sent via email from Leeuwkop Prison in May inviting them to make representations at the Correctional Supervision and Parole Board sitting.
She had been angered at the fact that, as victims, they had not been notified of the move.
Speaking to the Daily News on Monday following the parole hearing she said that at first, the hearing could not begin due to connectivity problems.
“We sat there from 9am dealing with connection issues, where, at some point, the lap top was not loud enough. We did not utilise the tv in the boardroom, and we had to result to using WhatsApp video call so we could hear them and see their picture of their screen. This is exactly what he wanted. I said during the hearing that these were all ways he had intended for me not to be at the hearing.”
In the hearing in 2020, Bowman told the board that Zwiegelaar had put her through torture for 10 years, and yet, after spending seven years behind bars, he felt he should be granted parole.
This time around, she spoke of her anger around his move from Westville Prison, which she was unaware of and cited a comment that Children’s Rights advocate Joan van Niekerk had made in an article printed in this publication around parolees who often repeated their offences and the rights of victims knowing the whereabouts of their perpetrators.
“I read out Joan Van Nieker’s comment on the parole hearing. They will put the comment on his personal profile. He is going to be serving out the next two years of his sentence. I am going to be informed about the additional programmes that he needs to finish while there. It was an eye-opener for them when I mentioned that we were not informed that he had been moved. I told them that it should be a right of ours as victims to be informed of the whereabouts of our perpetrators. It made a huge impact and I think they realised that they were being used as a scapegoat because I was not able to attend the hearing physically due to the move,” said Bowman.
She said unlike in 2020, where the decision was communicated to her some weeks after the hearing, the board asked for some to discuss the matter and was told on Monday while at Westville that Zwiegelaar was to be refused parole.
“I was not expecting that this time he gets any exemption. I was extremely surprised that the board was reasonable and professional and that all they wanted was as much information as they had only had him for just under a year there in Leeuwkop.”
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