Pretoria - An HIV-positive man who raped his 12-year-old stepdaughter about 30 times while her mother was away caring for another of her children who was sick, deserved his sentence of life imprisonment.
This was the view of Judges Peter Olsen and Mohini Moodley, sitting in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, in considering an appeal by the man against his conviction for rape and the sentence handed down by a local regional court magistrate.
The rapes - committed between July and September 2011 - only came to an end when a neighbour, alerted by crying, saw the man lying on top of the girl and told his own parents and then the girl’s mother when she returned after a trip away.
“I had known him for six years, calling him my father. But in his mind he had other intentions about me. What really hurts me is that he is sick with HIV and he never used condoms when he raped me. I felt like it was not me he was doing this to, but somebody else. I could not believe it,” the girl said in a statement handed in to the court.
The girl lived with her mother and stepfather, who also had two children of their own.
Her relationship with her stepfather - who she called father - was good and he treated her as his own child.
But that changed when her mother went away to seek treatment for one of the younger children. After four days of “grooming”, her stepfather raped her.
Once, she said, he had been drunk and had ripped her clothes off her.
She had not told anyone - and had even initially denied anything had happened when confronted by her mother - because she had been too scared.
Her stepfather had also denied everything but, according to the mother, had finally admitted that he had had sex with her but just once when drunk.
The judges, considering argument in the appeal against his conviction, said issues raised by the man’s lawyers did not tarnish the decision by the magistrate in the regional court to find him guilty.
“The weight of evidence and the probabilities support the conviction,” they said.
Regarding sentencing, they noted that the magistrate had been loath to impose life imprisonment but had found the aggravating circumstances to be overwhelming.
“From the complainant’s perspective, a proper relationship of father and daughter had developed between them. He used to help her, even with washing her clothes. Her mother obviously thought nothing of leaving her in his care.
“However, it appears the relationship was more cultivated than natural and more apparent than real… and there were no reasons put forward that his moral blameworthiness should be regarded as less than the facts suggest,” the judges said, confirming both conviction and sentence.
The Mercury