Cape Town - A military doctor who appealed his conviction and sentence for rape and sexual assault at the Western Cape High Court was only partly successful when the court upheld the guilty verdict, but reduced his jail term.
Dr Denzil Clinton King, who was stationed at the Oudtshoorn military base, was accused of two counts of sexual assault and one count of rape relating to his examination of two South African National Defence Force recruits in 2016.
According to court documents, the complainants went to see King on different days, did not know each other and belonged to different platoons.
The first complainant was sexually assaulted on April 8 and 18 that year. On April 21, the second complainant was seeing King for an ear infection when he raped her.
The two victims reported the incidents to their respective squad leaders.
During his trial at the Oudtshoorn regional court, King claimed the charges were false and had been brought against him in retaliation for not booking the complainants off sick, which would have exempted them from physical training.
In May 2018, King was convicted on the charges against him. He was sentenced to eight years imprisonment for rape and three years in jail for each of the sexual assault charges.
The magistrate ordered that the sentence for one of the sexual assault charges run concurrently with the rape sentence, and half of the other sexual assault sentence also run concurrently with the rape jail term. Effectively, King was sentenced to nine and a half years direct imprisonment.
He applied to have both the conviction and sentencing overturned, but the court found there were no grounds to overturn the guilty verdict.
However, his sentences were overturned and the court instead imposed six years in jail for rape and three years imprisonment for each of the sexual assault charges. It ordered that the sexual assault jail terms run concurrently with the rape term.
African News Agency (ANA)