The modus operandi of an alleged Khayelitsha serial rapist was to attack his victims on Tuesdays after 7am.
Captain Wayne Nachtmann, of the SAPS Investigative Psychology Unit, testified at the Western Cape High Court on Thursday that Aviwe Hoya would threaten the girls with a knife before robbing them of their valuables.
Nachtmann said when people committed two or more rapes using the same modus operandi, that qualified them as serial rapists.
Hoya is charged with kidnapping, robbing and raping five Khayelitsha girls between September 2011 and August 2012. The State contends the girls were on their way to or from school.
The State says Hoya ambushed the victims, threatened to stab them and forced them to walk with him before taking them to an open field behind Esangweni High School in Kuyasa, Khayelitsha.
“Serial rapists have comfort zones. Their first comfort zone is where they meet their victims and the second is where they commit the crimes,” said Nachtmann.
He said after he perused the dockets he compiled a “metric” which showed Hoya’s modus operandi.
Nachtmann testified that Hoya “was a donor of the DNA found on the five victims”.
“He felt comfortable committing the alleged rape,” Nachtmann said.
Madinani Mokoka, the doctor who examined the girls, testified that four of them had “scratches” and blood in their genitals. She said in all the victims “there was acute forceful penetration by a blunt object”.
Hoya’s DNA was not in the police’s database until he was arrested for a robbery case in the Eastern Cape in October 2016. Police had been searching for him for several years before they eventually received information that he had fled the province.
Hoya was identified through many body features, but the most outstanding was a gang number, 28, on his right thumb.
In November last year, Hoya made an abrupt U-turn and asked for the case to go on trial when he was about to be sentenced to four life terms and an additional 20 years’ direct imprisonment after entering into a plea bargain.