Oscar’s prison therapy will be ‘different’

“He is currently receiving treatment. [If he goes to prison] it would be different to the current therapy,” defence witness social worker and probation officer Annette Vergeer said under cross-examination from prosecutor Gerrie Nel.

Prisons are there to “secure” society from people who were “truly a danger to society” which Pistorius was not, Vergeer said.

Vergeer said even if Pistorius was sent to the health facilities section of a prison, that would be making an exception for him.

“I just believe that I cannot say that for the accused person per se that there are alternatives available,” she said.

Nel was cross-examining her on her report on Pistorius, which she presented for the defence during proceedings.

Pistorius was found guilty last month of the culpable homicide of Reeva Steenkamp, his girlfriend.

In Vergeer’s report, which the defence had paid her to compile, she recommended that the paralympic athlete get three years of correctional supervision and 16 hours of community service a month for killing Steenkamp.

Nel said what bothered him about Vergeer’s report was that all the factors she mentioned for Pistorius to not get a jail sentence, could apply to other prisoners as well.

She said different cases would require different factors to be taken into account.

“There will be factors taken into account on every individual case,” she said.

Vergeer said she could not comment on a scenario where Pistorius was convicted of murder because the circumstances would have been different.

“I can only elaborate on what he was convicted for,” she said.

On September 12, Pistorius was convicted of culpable homicide on for the Valentine’s Day 2013, shooting of Steenkamp in his Pretoria townhouse. The court found him not guilty of murder.

Pistorius shot Steenkamp through the locked door of the toilet, apparently thinking she was an intruder about to emerge and attack him. She was hit in the hip, arm, and head.

Pistorius was also found guilty of firing a pistol under a table at Tasha’s restaurant in Johannesburg in January 2013 and not guilty of shooting through the open sunroof of a car in Modderfontein on September 30, 2012.

– Sapa

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