KWAZULU-NATAL - DURBAN - 42 YEAR OLD MAN JAILED FOR RAPING GIRLFRIEND'S 6 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER

A Durban man’s name will now be added to the Register for Sex Offenders after being sentenced on Monday to 18 years in jail for raping his girlfriend’s 6-year-old daughter over two years.

Durban Regional Court magistrate Simphiwe Hlophe called the 42-year-old man’s conduct “despicable and very horrendous”.

“(He) was a father figure to this child and was a caregiver; there was a trust relationship between the accused and the child. He would come in drunk, pretend he was watching a soccer match on TV then rape the child when others were asleep,” Hlophe said.

The man, originally from Eshowe, who lived with his fiancée in Mayville, was found guilty of rape early last month and on Monday sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment.

He cannot be named as it would identify the young girl.

According to the charge sheet, he had raped the girl over a two-year period, from 2010 to 2012, from when she was 6 to 8 years old.

In mitigation, the court heard that he worked as a cleaner in Umbilo and had been in custody awaiting trial since July 2013. He was also a first offender.

The State had handed in a victim impact assessment report which read that the young girl was “no longer a normal child”.

The child now preferred to sit inside her house and if she did play with other children she easily got irritated and hit some of them. She was now failing at school and teachers were concerned about this.
She also complains about abdomen pains and her guardian said she was suffering financially as her medical aid was exhausted, and she needed to take the little girl to the doctor now and again.
Hlophe said the defence attorney had argued for the court to deviate from the minimum prescribed sentence of life imprisonment because the little girl did not sustain serious injuries.
“This is rape within the family,” the magistrate said.

He had then referred to a Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) judgment which found the suggestion that rape within a family was less reprehensible than rape outside was untenable.

“A father is in a position of authority and command over a daughter. It is a position to be exercised with reverence, in a daughter’s best interests. For a father to abuse that position to obtain forced sexual access to his daughter’s body constitutes a deflowering in the most grievous and brutal sense,” read the SCA judgment.

Hlophe said this kind of offence against vulnerable victims such as women was common and had to be stopped by imposing a sentence that sent a clear message to society that such offences would not be tolerated.

“The court has to take into account that the complainant was an innocent, defenceless and vulnerable victim. She was sexually penetrated over a period of time by her stepfather whom she had trusted. Our courts must rise to the occasion and pronounce themselves unequivocally against such abuse committed by the accused,” he said.

In deciding against a life imprisonment sentence, Hlophe had considered the fact that the man was a first offender, had a Grade 7 level of education, was drunk each time he raped the little girl and also that he had been in custody for two years.

* Comments have been closed to protect the identity of the minor or minors mentioned in the article.

VIA - iol.co.za