Johannesburg – The two children who endured rape at the hands of a former top Ekurhuleni cop are yet to get justice after the matter against Adam Cummings and his co-accused Tebogo Maregele was postponed yet again.
The pair was found guilty two years ago and after many postponements, sentence was supposed to have been handed down on Friday.
However Cummings’s lawyer failed to appear at the South Gauteng High Court where sentence was supposed to be handed down. The matter was then postoponed to March 5.
The presiding office Judge Mokgoatleng indicated that this would be the last time the matter would be postponed.
Mokgoatlheng ruled in 2019 that Cummings and Maregele were guilty of all the charges against them, except those concerning a raped girl who could not identify the ex-top traffic officer at a police identity parade.
The two girls whom Cummings was found guilty of raping were nine and 15-years old.
The nine-year-old was lured by Maregele in Moroka, Soweto. Cummings bought food for the child and, together with Maregele, drove her to a secluded area.
Cummings raped her there, while Maregele assisted him. After her ordeal, the child was given R50 as an attempt to bribe her into silence.
Despite being threatened with murder, the child told her mother about the crime.
The 15-year-old was raped by Cummings on two occasions: both incidents happened in a secluded veld in Soweto.
Cummings claimed that she was his girlfriend and that he had consensual sex with her.
Maregele was found guilty of being an accomplice in the rape of the nine-year-old, and on two counts of the sexual exploitation of children and human trafficking.
It was revealed in a statement Maregele made to the police that she was eight when she first met Cummings in 2004, a former superintendent in the security division at the Ekurhuleni Metro Police.
At the time, Maragele had become friendly with Cummings’ mistress and young son.
The statement further claims that Cummings took Maregele to an abandoned area and raped her, before telling her that she had to keep the incident a secret.
Even after she moved from Tembisa to Sedibeng, she stayed in communication with Cummings, who she claims raped her again on two separate occasions in 2007.
When Maregele moved to her mother in Soweto in 2009 when she was 15, she claimed they again had intercourse, a pattern that continued until she was 18.
It was at this time that Cummings recruited Maregele to find teenagers or children he could rape, a proposition to which she agreed.
The statement details the incidents where she found the victims for Cummimgs as well as alleged sexual incidents with other teenagers. When Cummings became suspicious that Maregele would speak to the police about the rapes, he asked her to send an incriminating picture that he used to blackmail her into silence.
IOL