Johannesburg - A 63-year-old woman allegedly caught a 39-year old school groundsman in the act of raping her six-year-old grandchild in a classroom at Rembrandt Park Primary School in Joburg.
The trial of the groundsman, Harold Ndebele, started at the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Thursday.
The alleged rape happened in June.
“The door was shut. No one was answering, so I opened. He was behind the stack of chairs with my child,” the grandmother said outside court on Thursday.
She said the chairs had been stacked to shoulder level on a bench in the classroom.
She did not see exactly what the man was doing, except that her granddaughter had been lying down.
Following a doctor’s appointment that afternoon, the girl’s private parts had a rash and semen was found on them.
The child revealed the details of the sexual assault during several sessions at the Teddy Bear Clinic. She said this was not a once-off incident, and Ndebele had touched her inappropriately before the alleged rape.
“The accused is up for life imprisonment because the incident occurred more than once and the child is a minor,” sexual offences prosecutor Lisa Davy said.
The Star