Rape suspect awaits judgement day

The suspect appeared before the court today (February 23) as the state and the defence were giving their final arguments.

The Struisbult resident is facing a charge of rape after he allegedly raped a 15-year old girl from KwaThema.

Giving its final arguments, the state pointed out that the victim was raped by the suspect at his home while he claimed to give counselling to the young girls of the amaswati culture.

The state also argued that the statements given by the seven state witnesses confirmed that the young girl was indeed the victim of rape.

“The victim’s willingness to have several tests performed to confirm rape before and after the case was thrown out of court explains that the girl wanted to show the court that she was raped,” argued the state.

The state continued to convince the magistrate to find the suspect guilty after it reminded the court that the suspect was sometimes reluctant to give answers to some of the questions posed to him by the state.

Referring to the statement given by a witness called by the suspect’s defence on February 16, the state highlighted that the witness confirmed they had lied under oath about who gave her the information that she wrote in her statement that was presented before the court on that day.

Given a chance to give its final arguments, the defence started by explaining that the statements given by the state witnesses were different.

The defence queried why the victim did not scream when she was raped as her sister was in a dining room inside the house in which she claimed the rape took place.

“We understand that the victim’s brother was also in the same yard and he would have come to his sister’s rescue if she screamed for help,” said the defence.

The defence then explained that it is not happy that the victim failed to give the court the date of the incident.

It continued to argue that the failure by the victim to give an answer about what kind of pills and how many she took in an attempt to commit suicide, proves that the witness given by the victim in court is not satisfactory to the defence.

After the magistrate listened to both parties’ arguments, the case was postponed for April 17 for the magistrate to hand down a judgement.