Cape Town - A 60-year-old Mitchells Plain man has been found guilty of raping four little girls.
“Good people do bad things sometimes,” a magistrate told Achmat Benting on Tuesday, nearly three years after his arrest.
Benting was found guilty of 13 of the 14 charges of rape and sexual assault of children who all lived in his street in Beacon Valley.
Graphic details of his sickening crimes emerged at the Mitchells Plain Regional Court, where it also came out that the sex predator threatened to kill his young victims and even “send Pagad to their homes” if they told anybody.
Benting and his wife Gadija, who are married for over 40 years, had no children of their own.
Witnesses testified that he used to invite children to his house, showering them with gifts, and financially supporting their parents.
Benting had pleaded not guilty to all the charges, claiming that there was a conspiracy against him.
He raped and molested four girls, aged seven and 14 years old, between 2010 and 2012, in his home.
Two of the victims were twins, aged 10 at the time of his arrest.
A doctor testified that the girls’ vaginas looked like that of a woman who had given birth many times.
Dressed in a khaki top and black pants, a frail-looking Benting appeared nervous in the dock, but showed no real emotion as Magistrate Ivan Munnik handed down his three-hour judgement.
Munnik said all the victims’ testimonies were supported by the medical evidence, and that their statements had echoed what Benting had said himself in statements made to police shortly after his arrest.
Benting had said: “I have a problem and I need help. I get sexual feelings which I cannot control… the children in the road, they love me and they visit me. They sit on my lap and I hug them, [but] I never touched them.”
Munnik read a statement by one of the twins, in which she said Benting threatened to have Pagad destroy their home if she told anyone: “When he was finished he gave her a R3 and said she must not tell anyone.
“He said if she told anyone, her mother was going to Lentegeur (psychiatric) hospital and her father will die, Pagad will burn their house down.
Munnik dismissed the claims of a conspiracy by the children’s parents, saying the victims had let the cat out of the bag themselves by breaking their “pinky swear” game.
The children had told each other of the sex attacks while swimming in a pool but “pinky swore” not to tell anyone.
But one of their friends, who was not a victim, told her mother.
Munnik said Benting’s wife had lied to cover up for her husband when she claimed she never left him alone.
Outside court, family and residents danced with happiness. The mom of the eight-year-old victim danced around holding a pink nightie, saying that is what she wants Benting to wear in prison
Sentencing is expected to start on May 25.
Daily Voice