Pretoria - A man who was sentenced to life imprisonment for raping an 11-year-old child and impregnating her claimed that he had consensual sex with her as she was his “child bride”.
The man, who cannot be named to protect the child’s identity, appealed against his conviction and life imprisonment sentence before the Western Cape High Court.
The court, however, confirmed both conviction and sentence.
The excuse of the man, which was rejected by the court, was that he thought “his bride” was 15 at the time when her father “gave her to him”.
The father, however, denied that she was given to his neighbour as a bride. He claimed that he simply asked the accused, who lived next door, whether his daughter could move in with him as he did not have space to accommodate her.
The child, in her evidence, also denied that she was a child bride. According to her, the accused raped her on at least three occasions and told her not to tell anyone or else he would kill her.
The fact that she was being raped only came to light when she was seven months’ pregnant with the accused’s child.
The father said he saw at that stage that she was putting on weight, and he discussed it with another female neighbour, who suggested that he buy a home pregnancy test.
The father claimed he was devastated by the news as he was not aware that his neighbour was raping his daughter. By then it was too late for her to undergo an abortion.
The accused pleaded not guilty to rape as he claimed the sex was consensual. His defence was that the complainant’s father had given her to him as a child bride in accordance with Malawian custom. Apart from rejecting this evidence, two judges who presided over his appeal said in terms of the law, a 11-year-old child could never consent to sex.
The father testified that she was born in Malawi and came to live with him in South Africa while her mother remained in Malawi.
They lived in a small shack that barely accommodated their two beds. They thus agreed that the girl would move into the second bedroom of the rapist’s shack. They further agreed to cook and eat together in the neighbour’s shack, which had a kitchen.
According to the father, he told his neighbour she was 11 years old.
It emerged during the trial that the father, even after finding out that his friend and neighbour had raped and impregnated his daughter, had sent her back to the neighbour that night, saying that was her home.
It was only the next day, when the community had found out that the child had been raped and assaulted the accused, that the father then went to the police.
When confronted in court with the claim that he handed his daughter over as a child bride, the father denied it and said “a small child cannot be married to an old or older man”.
According to the girl, the rapes started when the accused called her to his room one day. She thought he wanted her to go to the shop, but instead it was the start of her rape hell.
She later gave birth to a boy, who she briefly held before he was taken away from her. She said she cried because she never thought this was going to happen in her life. After that a social worker took her to see the child on one occasion.
She herself was taken into foster care, where she remains.
The court commented that it was “beyond comprehension” how the accused, who is in his 30s, could claim he had consensual sex with the child. This was described as one of the worst cases of rape.
“This type of crime must be combated on all fronts in South Africa by making use of every suitable means, even more so when the victim is a young child,” the court said.
Pretoria News