Cape Town - Rashied Staggie has always insisted the rape charge against him was “trumped up”.
And that his alleged victim was forced to name him as an attacker so that cops could finally put him behind bars.
When he was found guilty of rape in 2003, he refused to testify in mitigation of sentencing,saying: “I have no fear… I refuse to ask for mitigation. You do what you must do.”
Acting Judge Jeremy Sarkin convicted Staggie and Hard Livings gang member Randall Bosch of rape and kidnapping on January 28, while Staggie was also convicted on a further charge of contravening the Arms and Ammunition Act.
The court found that Staggie and Bosch – together with two other men – kidnapped a girl from Manenberg, aged 17 at the time, on August 22, 2001, and took her to Mitchells Plain where Staggie forced her at gunpoint to allow the men to rape her.
Staggie did not have intercourse with the victim and later told the court he was “embarrassed” to be seen as a rapist.
The woman did not know the identities of the other two men, but told the court they looked like (Indians) from Durban.
His victim told the court that she was targeted for snitching on a woman who had hidden a gun on behalf of the Hard Livings gang.
She said within hours of the woman being arrested, Manenberg gangsters had already learnt that there was an informer in their neighbourhood.
The teen said several known HL gangsters called her a traitor and she began to fear for her life and that of her young child.
She claimed Staggie forced her into a car with three other men, including Bosch, and drove past Nyanga Junction in the direction of Mitchells Plain.
They parked in a secluded spot and Staggie told her that he had lost trust in her and that she could make it up to him by sleeping with the other men who were outside the car smoking mandrax.
When she refused, he produced a gun.
Bosch then came to the open car door and told her to take her clothes off and grabbed her skirt.
She insisted she take her own clothes off and lay down in the backseat.
She claimed Staggie watched the three men violate her in the rearview mirror.
The complainant testified that none of the men had ejaculated in her and that after each man had raped her, he wiped his penis off on a rag with black oily marks on it.
Daily Voice
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