Angry residents outside the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court on Monday expressed their disgust that the suspect in the Michaela Williams case is a convicted rapist who was released on parole in 2018.

“My question to [the] government is, why is a convicted rapist of an eight-year-old child being let out onto the streets? Not even the community of Pelican Park knew that he was a rapist,” said founder and CEO of the Western Cape Missing Persons Unit Candice van der Rheede.

Michaela was reported missing by her mother last Wednesday night. An investigation led the police to the 48-year-old suspect who lives two doors from the Williams family. He admitted to the crime and directed the police to where he had buried her body.

‘Stabbed in the heart with scissors’

The suspect was released on parole in 2018 after serving jail time for the attempted murder and attempted rape of an eight-year-old in 2005. The mother of the victim attended the trial in support of the Williams family.

“It’s like an old wound … it doesn’t heal, every time the pain [comes] back and I’m asking myself who is going to be his next victim, who is he going to hurt, when is it going to stop?”

Her child was stabbed in the heart with scissors during the attack but survived.

“I hope this time he will be put away for good and for life, that he won’t get the chance to put his hands on another innocent child,” she said.

The case will be heard again on April 14.