Cape Town - A Dunoon man accused of abducting a 16-year-old girl from the Eastern Cape and using her as a sex slave for more than two months has appeared in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court after being arrested by the Hawks last Thursday.
The State alleges the young woman from the Nqamakhwe village in the Eastern Cape was forced into marriage by an unknown man.
The man, later identified as Ayanda Wellington Wellem, 47, informed the woman that they were married according to traditional rights and that she had to live with him.
The woman refused, but he raped her “since their marriage night”, prosecutor Cecil Engel told the court on Monday.
Engel said Wellem had brought the woman to Cape Town against her will, so that she could live with him as his wife in Dunoon.
The State alleges the woman was held in Wellem’s house and forced to have sex with him. Her plight was only exposed when she fell ill and persuaded Wellem to take her to a clinic because she needed medical attention.
On September 20, Wellem agreed to take her to the clinic, where she told a nurse that she had been repeatedly raped. The nurse then notified the police, who traced the man to his home in Dunoon, where he was arrested a week later.
Wellem has been charged with a Schedule Six offence and must convince Magistrate Zwelindumile Sogwagwa that exceptional and compelling circumstances exist to justify his release on bail.
He will remain in custody until his next scheduled court appearance on Monday.
Cape Argus