Bob Hewitt to remain behind bars
Disgraced tennis champion Bob Hewitt is set to remain behind bars after the Correctional Supervision and Parole Review Board (CSPRB) reviewed and set aside his parole placement on Friday.
According to Correctional services spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo, the Parole Review Board found that there was a lack of dialogue by the offender with his victims.
In March 2015, High Court Judge Bert Bam found the 75-year-old Addo resident guilty of raping Suellen Sheehan and Theresa Tolken and of sexually assaulting another young woman.
The victims were teenagers at the time and Hewitt their tennis coach.
"The Correctional Services Act and the Criminal Procedure Act does make an avenue for the victims of crime to participate in the restorative justice process. This is more about victim-offender dialogue so the review board picked up that this particular process had not been attended to and it is really critical," says Nxumalo.
"They went beyond that to include other interventions that must be given attention by correctional services and the parole board when they review Mr Bob Hewitt's parole application."
This is the second setback for Hewitt after the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Ronald Lamola, suspended the parole granted to him in September citing the same reason.
"The profile that was submitted to the review board will go back to the parole board then it will have to indicate how far did it go in addressing issues that were raised by the review board and based on that and based on other reports from specialists like psychologists, social workers then they will make that determination whether Mr Hewitt is ready to be placed on parole," Nxumalo explains.
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