Johannesburg - The man accused of abducting a teenager in Bezuidenhout Valley has been charged with three counts of rape and two of kidnapping.
The Star reported last week how Jeppe police were hunting for the man who allegedly kidnapped the teenager and kept her in a filthy back room in the Joburg suburb. He apparently sexually and physically assaulted her for hours.
The man is believed to have been stalking the young woman and two of her friends for weeks.
On Saturday September 12, he approached the 18-year-old and choked her until she lost consciousness. When she came to, the teen found herself in an unfamiliar room. Her captor allegedly spent the next day-and-a-half raping her and cutting her with a knife when she tried to resist.
When he eventually let Maria* leave the room in the early hours of Monday morning, she was at first too afraid to approach the police because he had threatened to kill her and her family if she ever spoke about the incident.
After being arrested last week, the suspect appeared on Wednesday in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court, his thin frame shaking as he stood in the dock.
The State’s charge sheet revealed he would be facing five charges - three of rape and two of kidnapping - and that he faced a minimum of a life sentence if found guilty.
Last week, The Star reported how Maria’s mother helped the police capture the 23-year-old suspect, after inviting him and his parents to her home through a ruse that she’d drop the charges.
When the man, who had been on the run for more than a week, arrived, she and her daughter contacted the police.
* Not her real name
**Comments have been closed to protect the identity of the minors mentioned in the article.
The Star