The mom of a girl brutally raped, beaten and left for dead has described the heartbreaking moment she learnt a family friend allegedly tried to kill her child.
The single mom, 33, was testifying in the trial of Stephen “Foxy” Isaacs.
Isaacs has pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping, rape, assault and attempted murder for the October 2010 attack on a nine-year-old girl.
The woman, who cannot be named to protect her child’s identity, said she had left her daughter in the care of an aunt on the night of the attack.
The next morning she went to fetch her daughter and when she wasn’t there, she assumed the girl was out playing with friends.
At about 1pm that afternoon, two of her daughter’s friends came to tell her the girl had been found crawling out of bushes not far from her Darling home.
“There was a lot of children and people standing around her when I got to her,” said the mom.
“I asked her what happened and she said that a car had knocked her over.”
The mom told the court that she could see her daughter was lying.
“After the doctor examined her, I told her to tell me what really happened.
“She told me: ‘Mummy, uncle Stephen het vir my verkrag’(raped me).”
At that point in her emotionally-charged testimony, the mom burst out crying.
Isaacs sat stony-faced throughout the testimony, unlike Monday when he sat smirking in the dock.
With tears streaming down her cheeks, the mother told the court her daughter admitted to lying about the car incident because she was embarrassed.
“She told me: ‘ Mummy weet hoe is die mens e’(Mommy you know how these people are),” the mother said.
Three days after her attack, the child lost her vision and the use of her right arm and both her legs.
The little girl then had a fit and started shouting: “ Los my jou n***, los my.(Let me go, let me go)”
“I asked her what is wrong, but it was almost like she wasn’t there,” added the mom.
“She just laid there. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t walk, she couldn’t talk.”
The mother said doctors told her that her daughter had suffered a delayed reaction to the violent attack and that the fits and brain seizures were the result of a lack of oxygen to the brain from when her attacker strangled her.