Johannesburg - Though her tone was neutral, Judge Delize Smith’s extreme anger was palpable in her words.
The man standing before her had raped his orphaned 14-year-old niece, turned her into his sex slave, impregnated her and then killed their child and abandoned the little boy’s broken body next to a railway line in 2013.
“To murder your own child is one of the most heinous acts you can perform,” the judge told the man while meting out justice for the slain toddler in the high court sitting in Palm Ridge.
The man remained expressionless throughout the judge’s sentencing on Friday.
In summing up evidence, Judge Smith described how the man’s niece was particularly vulnerable when he first sexually assaulted her at gunpoint, robbing her of her virginity and exposing her to the horrors of incest and rape.
As an orphan with no siblings, there was nowhere for her to turn after the rape, especially after the man threatened to kill her if she ever spoke up.
“You exerted so much pressure on her, you stole her youth. She totally succumbed to your sexual advances,” said the judge.
Before falling pregnant, the teen was solely dependent on the man’s grandmother to look after her. When the pregnancy became known to the grandmother, the girl was thrown out into the streets, rejected.
She became the laughing stock of her community and was forced to quit school because of the pregnancy. With nowhere else to turn, she returned to her uncle and father of her child, who continued to abuse her.
“Her life became a nightmare,” said Judge Smith. “No wonder she says she will never forgive you.”
The judge was visibly disgusted by the fact that the man had, during his trial, blamed the 14-year-old’s “sleeping around” as his reason for raping her.
It was not just his niece who suffered greatly at the man’s hands; he also physically abused their child throughout the boy’s short life. In the final months of the five-year-old’s life, neighbours reported seeing the man beat the child using a broomstick, shoes and his fists. Though the child sustained a broken arm, seven cracked ribs and a cracked skull, his father refused to take him for medical treatment.
One day in 2013, the boy soiled himself, prompting a vicious beating from the father that would ultimately kill him.
The boy’s body was then dumped in a stretch of veld, where it would be discovered only much later, and lay at the Germiston state mortuary for almost two months before he was identified – only after The Star published his face on its front page in 2013.
Judge Smith was scathing of the man on Friday. She said he had consistently denied assaulting the child, despite the overwhelming evidence against him and his admission that he had not taken the boy to a doctor despite knowing he was severely injured.
“The aggravating circumstances are enormous,” she said.
For the judge, it was important to send a strong message to society that relatives cannot abuse the trust that children have in them.
The man was sentenced to life imprisonment for each of the two rape charges and a further 25 years for murder.
The Star