File image for illustration.
A father was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday for repeatedly raping his 13-year-old daughter for seven years while knowing he was HIV positive.
He was also handed hefty sentences for physically abusing his two other children and beating a woman, who tried to intervene, during a public assault on one of the minors.
The man, 46, from the Breede River Valley in the Western Cape cannot be named to protect the identities of his children who in court papers are only known as “R”, “S”, and “T”.
“The court does not find any substantial or compelling circumstances to justify a deviation from the prescribed minimum sentence of life imprisonment for the count of rape because the accused raped R repeatedly, knowing she is his biological child in his care and while he knew he was HIV positive,” the written judgment said.
The court found the fact that the man knew he had been HIV positive since 2011 was an aggravating factor.
In a victim impact report, R, 13, said she was raped and severely beaten by her father from the age of six and that he had threatened to mutilate her and sell her body parts.
“She expressed feelings of anger, fear, shame and guilt,” the report read.
The girl is quoted as saying: “Abuse is already in my blood, I’m used to it.”
The rapist was also sentenced to 10 years direct imprisonment for abusing the teen. This will run concurrently with his sentences of eight and four years on the two other child abuse charges as well as a six-year sentence for the pointing of a firearm.
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