Dylan Bettencourt
Oscar Pistorius is said to have dropped to his knees in front of Reeva Steenkamp’s father to ask for forgiveness for murdering his daughter in 2013, a new documentary reveals.
Reeva’s father Barry Steenkamp says in My Name is Reeva that the encounter was both difficult and traumatic.
The 79-year-old said the former paralympian continued to claim that he shot Reeva through a locked bathroom door four times by accident.
“He gave me his truth, but I didn’t get my truth,” Steenkamp told the documentary makers.
“He came in, he went on his knees and he took my hand and shook it. He thanked me and told me how sorry he was and how he can’t stop thinking about that moment. I didn’t say I forgive you, I just said, ‘Thank you’.”
Reeva’s mother June did not want to be a part of the victim-offender dialogue and instead of meeting Pistorius, she said she wrote to him.
“You have stolen her life,” June wrote.
She was asked by documentary makers if she thought Pistorius regretted his decision and felt any sense of remorse. She said: “If he’s destroyed by what he’s done now, that would be a good thing.”
The couple’s lawyer Tania Koen said the mood in the family was one of an overwhelming sense of grief and sadness.
Koen added that she did not believe Pistorius’s version of events.
Pistorius’s initial sentence of six years was later increased to 13 and a half years by the Supreme Court of Appeal.
His sentencing was backdated by the same court in August this year and he is now within his rights to apply for parole. Part of this process requires that he engages with Reeva Steenkamp’s parents in a victim-offender-dialogue.
Appraisals made by his supervisors said the former Paralympic gold medal winner completed all his rehabilitation programmes and has a low risk of committing another crime.
It is also said that Pistorius works as a cleaner in the special care unit, and he is also a weightlifting coach as well as being a member of both a book and gardening club, News24 reported.
Image source: @VanityFair
