Cape Town - A convicted child rapist has been sentenced to serve 34 years in jail for raping three young boys.
Enoch Bothata Lefuthane, 37, looked down in the dock of the Western Cape High Court as Judge Siraj Desai sentenced him on Tuesday.
Lefuthane was found guilty in September on seven counts: three of rape, three of abduction and one of kidnapping. He was acquitted, however, on three counts of attempted murder. Lefuthane initially faced 15 charges in respect of incidents that took place between 2005 and 2012 in an area in the Eastern Cape as well as Stellenbosch.
These incidents were alleged to have involved five boys who at the time were between the ages of six and 10. At the close of the State’s case, Lefuthane was acquitted of four charges - one of abduction and three of indecent assault - relating to one of the boys.
Another of the boys had been kept at Lefuthane’s house against his will and forced into the base of a bed while Lefuthane slept, but had not been raped.
In sentencing Lefuthane, Judge Desai gave consideration to Lefuthane’s personal circumstances, the interests of society and the nature of the crimes. He said the backdrop to the proceedings was the “huge public outcry against the endemic acts of violence, especially of a sexual nature, against women and children”, noting that the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children campaign was in progress.
While the prosecution had sought penalties that would result in Lefuthane being jailed for most, if not all, of the remainder of his natural life, his defence lawyer, Tania Kloppers, highlighted factors such as his compelling personal circumstances, the fact that he had already spent two years in custody awaiting trial and that he had shown remorse.
Judge Desai, however, also considered that the “persistent nature of the accused’s conduct, the actual deeds and the very young age of his victims makes the imposition of stringent penalties, at the very least, inevitable”.
Although Judge Desai imposed sentences for each of the individual counts for which Lefuthane was convicted, these were to run concurrently to some extent.
His effective sentence was 34 years’ imprisonment.
Cape Times