BY CHRIS MAUME, THE INDEPENDENT
Oscar Pistorius was not the first in his family to sleep with a gun close to hand. His parents divorced when he was six, and his mother Sheila – a paranoid alcoholic according to Dr Merryll Vorster, a psychiatrist called as an expert witness at his trial – kept hers under her pillow.
She was, the athlete has said many times, his principal inspiration and the driving force behind his success. She died suddenly when he was 15, and he has her date of death tattooed on his forearm.
Those who know him have spoken of a frenzied desire to prove himself, a trait clearly inculcated in him by Sheila. He recalled how he and his older brother Carl would go out to play. “You, put your shoes on,” she would tell Carl. “And you, put your legs on,” she would say to Oscar.
If he was out to prove himself that fateful Valentine’s Day night in 2013 when he shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, he is paying a heavy price for it today – found guilty of culpable homicide having been cleared of premeditated murder.
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OSCAR PISTORIUS TRIAL: ATHLETE FOUND GUILTY OF CULPABLE HOMICIDE – VERDICTS IN FULL
LIVE VIDEO: WATCH OSCAR PISTORIUS TRIAL VERDICT
During the trial there was plenty of evidence that, quite apart from his physical disabilities, Pistorius was damaged even in childhood. His father Henke, according to Dr Vorster – a defence witness, it should be remembered – was viewed by his son as “an irresponsible and mostly absent parent”, and in his autobiography Pistorius described himself and his brother, growing up without their father, as “rudderless boats”. His mother’s determination that he should appear as “normal” as possible, despite the double below-the-knee amputation he underwent at 11 months, was seen as piling more stress on the young boy.
“The children were not soothed by their mother,” Dr Vorster told the court. “The children were reared to see their external environment as threatening.” Pistorius’s teens were unsettled: the family moved from place to place, and Pistorius, she said, was passed around between parents and relatives. His mother’s death left him with “no adult primary attachment figure,” leading to a generalised anxiety disorder.
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Categories: Africa, South Africa
Well most of today must have learn one or two lessons from oscar issue but GOD is best of judge