Incest dad gets three life terms

The man raped his two daughters for more than 10 years and even fathered three children with the eldest. Picture: Danie van der Lith

The man raped his two daughters for more than 10 years and even fathered three children with the eldest. Picture: Danie van der Lith

Published Sep 8, 2014

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Kimberley - A Kimberley father will spend the rest of his life in jail after being sentenced to three life sentences in the Free State High Court in Bloemfontein for raping his two daughters.

The man, 47, who cannot be identified to protect the children, raped his two daughters for more than 10 years and even fathered three children with the eldest.

He raped the children while the family was living on a farm near Boshof and later in Kimberley.

On Friday, Free State High Court Judge F Jordaan sentenced the man to life imprisonment for each count of rape and two years for assault with the intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

State prosecutor Advocate Amanda Bester said that the accused does not have any respect for his wife because he raped the children in front of her and assaulted her every time she wanted to protect them.

“The accused did not allow his wife and the two victims to mingle with other community members. This was done to ensure that his wife and the victims did not report their ordeal. As a consequence the two victims were denied the opportunity to attend school,” Bester said.

 

The two women and their mother said that they were relieved that “our suffering is now over”.

“What kind of a father has sex with his own daughters... that is sick! We expected him to care for us and not violate us and take away our innocence. He must rot and die in prison. We will never forgive him for what he did to us!” the daughters said during an exclusive interview over the weekend.

“When the (Free State High Court) judge (F Jordaan) handed down his sentences, I finally breathed a sigh of relief. I knew that it was over and that we won’t have to see him ever again. It felt good.

“At the same time I also felt sad for him because he is going to die there. I guess it was mixed emotions,” the eldest daughter said.

Although the two women are now aged 23 and 27, their father started having sex with them when they were 15 and this continued until 2013, shortly before he was arrested.

The father did not allow the sisters to leave the shack. “We used to stay locked up in the shack at all times. When he sent us to the shop, he would beat us if we took too long to return. Even when we explained to him that there was a queue at the shop and that was why we took long, he would still beat us.

“He did not want us to mingle with other children in the area for fear that we might tell them what he was doing to us,” the daughters said.

Earlier when the media arrived at the family’s shack, the youngest daughter, who appeared nervous, asked: “Is he (her father) coming back? Is he coming back? I thought that you (referring to the reporters) said he is coming back.”

She was visibly trembling as she spoke, trying to hold back tears.

She mostly shied away from talking to reporters and stood biting her nails a few metres from where her other sister and mother were sitting.

The eldest daughter did most of the talking and her mother, 53, also appeared reserved and did not say much.

“I will never forgive that man for what he did to my children. He has broken down this family,” the softly-spoken mother said.

She added that when she tried to stop her husband from raping the children, he would tell her: “They are my children, I can rape them if I want to! They are mine, I have a right to have sex with them any time that I want to.”

The man also assaulted his wife with a sjambok every time she tried to stop him.

He also frequently hit the two children with the sjambok and ordered them not to cry.

“The rapes started while we were still living on a farm not far from Boshof. At first he raped us when our mother was unaware and later he was open about it. He would take turns raping each of us in our mother’s presence and when she tried to stop him, he would hit her with the sjambok. When we tried to scream for help he threaten(ed) to kill us all with his knife. After raping us he would hit us again,” the daughters said.

The family said that they wanted to leave the shack they were currently living in because it was a grim reminder of their suffering.

“We wish to start a new life. We would love to have a place that we can call a home. We know that this ordeal will always haunt us, but staying in this shack is like being trapped inside his prison. It is as if he can walk in and do what he did to us again,” the sisters said.

The two sisters left school at primary level.

The eldest daughter is also worried about how she will tell her two children that their grandfather is also their father.

“How do you tell children that the man they believe is their grandfather is actually their father? How do you tell them about what happened? Where do I start? That will traumatise them. But at the same time, I don’t want them to hear about this from strangers or from people outside this family. I want to be the one who tells them the truth,” she said.

The mother did not report the rapes for several years because she feared her husband and their ordeal was only exposed in 2013 when the eldest daughter approached a community leader.

The regional communications manager of the National Prosecution Authority (NPA) in the Free State, Phaladi Shuping, welcomed the sentence, saying that “it sends out a clear message that crime against the most vulnerable of our community members will not be tolerated”.

“We applaud the community member who was brave enough to report the matter to the police.”

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