Knysna assault victim Alix Carmichele is keen to get on with her life and put her precedent-setting, seven-year court battle against the state behind her - a case that might not have reached the courts but for a chance meeting in a Port Elizabeth pub.

Carmichele, 36, who won her case against the ministries of justice and of safety and security in the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein last week, said yesterday: "It's been a long, hard struggle and finally I feel a sense of relief. Now I can get on with living.

"I tried hard to ignore the issue in between all the court cases over the years, but then just when I was getting that right, along would come another legal thing, another court case, another leave to appeal. It really wore me down.

"But it was worth it because this verdict will mean the police and prosecutors will have to apply their minds in sex cases and not just let convicted sex offenders out on bail, as they did with my attacker. They can now be held criminally responsible for not taking action to protect citizens."

The court dismissed with costs an appeal by the ministers of justice and of safety and security against a Cape High Court ruling that they were liable for the attack on Carmichele by Francois Coetzee in a Knysna beach house in 1995.

Justice Louis Harms of the appeal court found that a detective and a public prosecutor in Knysna acted negligently in 1995 when they failed to oppose bail for Coetzee, who had been arrested on a rape charge and had a previous conviction of sexual assault. Coetzee was later convicted of rape.

He was out on bail on this charge when he lay in wait for Carmichele in her friend's beach house and attacked her with a pick-axe handle, splitting open her scalp and breaking two bones in one of her arms. He then stabbed her in the chest.

The matter might not have reached the courts had it not been for a chance meeting between Carmichele and Port Elizabeth advocate Terry Price. They met in a pub in 1995 while Carmichele and friends were on their way home from the Grahamstown Festival.

Carmichele's friend mentioned that Coetzee was out on bail and this worried her because he lived near her beach house.

Price said if he could help legally, the friend should give him a ring and he wrote his phone number on a matchbox. Two weeks later Carmichele was attacked by Coetzee in her friend's beach house.

"If we hadn't met Terry, I don't think I would have thought about taking the matter to court, but he said I must," Carmichele said.

"From there it just grew and the case got a momentum of its own that was bigger than just me - it was about making law."

Carmichele said her legal team was working out the amount of her compensation claim.

With acknowledgements to Melanie Gosling and the Cape Times.