The families of Richard Bloom and Brett Goldin are to be asked to come face to face with men linked to their deaths.
|||Cape Town - The families of murdered fashion designer Richard Bloom and budding actor Brett Goldin are to be asked to come face-to-face with men linked to their deaths.
Convicts Jade Wyngaard and Nurshad Davids have served six and a half years of their 12-year sentences and this week they launched fresh bids to be set free.
This came a year after parole was denied last July.
The Department of Correctional Services’ Simphiwe Xako said on Thursday parole had again been denied on Wednesday, but this time the parole board had ruled that the “victim-offender mediation” process should begin.
“The objective of this process is that victims do not feel aggrieved if offenders are granted parole,” he explained.
“The ruling means the department must try to facilitate dialogue - hopefully successfully - between the victim and the offenders.
“The pair will then appear again on December 2 to hear if the parole board is happy with how this process has gone.”
But Goldin’s mother, Denise, said of the news: “I’m very distressed. I’ve got to the stage that I’m so absolutely shattered. I haven’t stopped crying since last night. I can’t continue like this. I’m falling apart at the moment.
“Professor Robert Peacock, a past parole board chairman and a professor of criminology, and the vice-president of the World Society of Victimology... he’s going to take it all on for all of us family members.
“For them to put pressure on us to meet them in the next four months is undue pressure. We need to have time to get our thoughts together. It will help the offenders, but who says it will help us?
“The only thing that could help us is to have their assurance that they will give us the absolute truth about what happened that night.
“And we want an assurance from the parole board that they’ve been fully rehabilitated and that they can go back to their communities and go back to be productive members of society. Only then would we agree to possible dialogue.
“Otherwise it’s only going to lead to more heartache for all of us,” Goldin said.
Davids and Wyngaard were initially sentenced to 15 years each for robbery, kidnapping and possession of an unlicensed firearm, but three years were taken off because they agreed to testify for the State - which they never did because a plea bargain was struck.
Cape Argus
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