Pietermaritzburg - A man was sentenced on Friday to life imprisonment by the Pietermaritzburg Regional Court for raping his daughter, the National Prosecuting Authority said.
The Hammarsdale man, now aged 32, started raping the girl in 2008 when she went to live with him and his family, regional spokeswoman Natasha Kara said.
She was six at the time. She had been living with her mother but was forced to move after the mother became ill.
When she went to visit her mother four years later, in 2012, she refused to go back to him. After a school teacher noticed she was not coping, she told her mother and a social worker that her father had raped her several times.
In her victim impact statement to the court the child said: “I do not wish upon anyone what happened to me. My father may deny it but he is denying something that he knows he did and it's hurtful.”
Prosecutor Mariam Aboobaker argued that the horror of that rape was aggravated because it had happened on several occasions and by someone the girl trusted.
“The National Prosecuting Authority welcomes this sentence and deems it fitting given the offence committed,” said Kara.
Sapa