Pair jailed for horror rape spree

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Published Jul 31, 2015

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Durban - Two Durban men will spend 55 years behind bars for raping four women and forcing their victims’ family members to rape them.

Siyanda China Dlamini, 22, and Scelo Lucky Mkhize, 23, were sentenced on Friday in the Verulam Regional Court in north of Durban following their conviction for house-breaking, rape, aggravated robbery, compelled sexual assault and compelled rape.

National Prosecuting Authority spokeswoman Natasha Ramkisson-Kara said that the attacks on two families in the space of five days in the same neighbourhood took place in May 2013.

In the first incident. Dlamini and Mkhize broke into a house where four people and a two-month-old baby were sleeping. Brandishing a firearm and a knife, they forced the four adult occupants to strip naked and then proceeded to rape the two women.

Ramkisson-Kara said that the court heard that Mkhize even stopped raping one of the women to allow her to quieten the crying baby. Once the baby had stopped crying he resumed raping the woman.

They then forced the two men at gunpoint to rape one of the women. One of the men pretended to rape one of the women, but the second man was caught pretending and was then forced onto the woman.

Five days later they struck at another household in the same neighbourhood where Dlamini and Mkhize raped the two women in that household.

They then demanded that the man rape his mother. When he refused they forced him to rape his sister, which the man then pretended to do.

Dlamini and Mkhize then made off with a television set, R100 cash and some clothing.

A little more than a week later, the sister in the second attack spotted Dlamini at the Starlight bar in Verulam. She alerted the police who arrested him.

Being friends with the victims in the first attack, the woman told them she had spotted one of their attackers.

As the victims of Mkhize and Dlamini in their first attack waited to identify Dlamini, they spotted Mkhize in the Verulam police station. He had been arrested on an unrelated dagga possession charge.

Police were immediately alerted to the fact that they had both men in custody.

Ramkisson-Kara said that the court heard DNA taken from both men matched DNA obtained from cervical swabs taken from the raped women.

The Director of Public Prosecutions in KZN, Advocate Moipone Noko welcomed the sentence.

“We hope that it will serve as a deterrent to people who contemplate committing such horrendous crimes. We view crimes of this nature in a very serious light,” she said.

ANA

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