"You gave your child to be abused. She was entitled to be protected, but instead she was raped."
These were the words of a Pretoria High Court judge to a 28-year-old mother who ordered her only child - a 11-year-old girl - to have sex with her stepfather.
Both the Mamelodi woman and her 40-year-old common law husband were sentenced to life imprisonment after it was found that the child was forced to have sex with the man over a period of six months.
The child testified that she had to have sex with him about once a week. This resulted in her being raped about 34 times before she told her uncle and aunt what was happening.
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| While her stepfather raped her, she cried |
The mother, who was convicted of being an accomplice to rape, cried bitterly after sentencing. Members of her family consoled her. The victim was not in court and is being cared for by foster parents.
Earlier the child told the court that she loved her mother very much in spite of what happened and would like to live with her.
Both accused were last year convicted in the Pretoria regional court and the matter was referred to the High Court for sentencing. They denied that they had anything to do with the child being raped and said it was "someone else" who did it.
The child testified that her teenage stepbrother also raped her once. She told her mother and stepfather about this and the teenager got a hiding and was told never to do it again.
The girl said that after instructing her to sleep with her stepfather, her mother would spend the night in her (the child's) bed. While her stepfather raped her, she cried, but her mother did nothing to help her, the court heard.
Even the defence conceded that this was "a despicable deed, to say the least". But Acting Judge Piet van der Byl was asked to have mercy on the couple.
Van der Byl described the rapes over six months as gruesome. He told the mother "it was not normal what you did to your child".
He said hardly a week went by without several child rape cases on the roll. He said word should go out to the entire country that child rapists will bear the full brunt of the law. "The rape of children is an appalling abuse of male power," he said.
- This article was originally published on page 2 of Pretoria News on May 11, 2004
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