CAPE TOWN – A mother accused of allowing her male companion to rape her 12-year-old daughter three times during the year 2014, appeared in court on Friday, together with the man.
The mother, 40, who may not be identified to protect the girl, faces two counts of conspiracy to commit sexual offences, and four charges of the exploitation of a child for sexual purposes.
With her in the dock was her male companion, Aamien Francis, of Phillipi on the Cape Flats, who faces three charges of rape and two of the exploitation of a child for sexual purposes.
Both pleaded not guilty in mid-March, before magistrate Mandy van Leeve in the Bellville Sexual Offences Court.
According to the charge sheet, the accused, the biological mother of the girl, left her child, aged three at the time, with a foster mother because the mother did not know how to raise a girl.
When the girl was 12, the mother removed the child from the foster mother, in order to register the child for a Sassa grant.
Instead of allowing the child to continue with her schooling, the mother kept her at home on the pretence that she was ill.
The mother would then invite Francis to her home, where he allegedly raped the child in the presence of her mother, before taking the mother shopping for groceries.
According to the charge sheet, the girl managed to inform her foster mother of what was going on.
In Friday’s proceedings, prosecutor Yolanda Pretorius closed the State’s case after calling specialised nursing sister Pauline Bagaza to explain a complicated medical report that she had compiled in respect of the injuries suffered by the child.
The nurse alleged that the child had in fact been raped, and said she could not exclude the possibility that the child had also been sodomised.
For court interpreter, Nicholas Mtima, it was a proud moment of “nothing succeeds like success”, when the magistrate commended him for meticulously translating the complex medical report from English to Afrikaans for the two Afrikaans-speaking accused.
The magistrate said Mtima had “risen to the occasion”, and had done his profession proud.
The magistrate added: “That was the most exemplary interpretation of a very complicated medical report, that I have ever encountered on the Bench.”
The case continues on April 11.