By Karen Breytenbach
Convicted serial rapist and former naval seaman Tsediso Letsoenya was an intelligent, charming and dangerous man with strong psychopathic tendencies whose only remedy was long-term incarceration.
His claimed sex addiction was "not an accepted psychiatric disorder". It did not explain the terror and pain he wanted to inflict on his rape and assault victims, psychiatrists from Valkenberg told the riveted Western Cape High Court on Friday.
Professor Sean Kaliski, head of Forensic Psychiatry at Valkenberg Hospital, and his colleague, Dr Larissa Panieri-Peter, interviewed Letsoenya and studied Judge Abe Motala's judgment to help the court determine whether Letsoenya was a dangerous criminal who had to be imprisoned without the possibility of parole.
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Letsoenya was sent for observation at Valkenberg after he was found guilty of 28 counts of rape, two of attempted rape, 28 of indecent assault, eight of robbery with aggravating circumstances, two of assault and two of crimen injuria in March.
Kaliski said Letsoenya complained that doctors were biased because he was assessed after conviction, as he believed they would have thought he was a nice man had they assessed him before the trial.
He said Letsoenya had a relatively high score of 17 out of 24 on the Psychopathy Checklist of characteristics such as grandiosity, superficial glibness, manipulative behaviour, lack of remorse and empathy, poor behavioural control and promiscuity. This meant Letsoenya showed strong psychopathic tendencies.
Kaliski and Panieri-Peter both told the court there was little to support a diagnosis of sex addiction, and agreed that it was a concept found in "pop psychology" which was not a recognised disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the standard international text on psychiatric disorders.
Advocate Nehemia Ballem was, however, instructed to cross-examine the psychiatrists about the possibility of a sex addiction, treatment and cure.
Kaliski said Letsoenya did not show signs of a real, debilitating dependence on sex, as his desire to have sex frequently did not stop him, for example, from going to work and performing well there.
"Besides, how much sex is too much for the average man? Is four times a day too much? Where is the benchmark, the gold standard?
"The interesting thing about society is that there are cures for anything. A cure for someone who rapes 30 women? The treatment is incarceration. Incarceration," Kaliski said.
Panieri-Peter said the evidence pointed "against the proposition that (Letsoenya) could recover with help".
"It's staggering, the absence of objective signs of remorse. When I asked him if he was sorry for what he had done, he said: 'What am I supposed to do, cry?'"
Letsoenya told doctors he was born in Bloemfontein, his parents divorced when he was little and he was molested by an older brother.
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