Mamelodi man gets 40-year jail term for raping two minors

A 25-year-old Mamelodi man has been sentenced to 40 years in jail for raping two minors.

Christopher Bapela appeared in the Pretoria Regional Court on Monday where he was sentenced.

He was given 20 years direct imprisonment each for two counts for the rape of the boys, aged 8 and 10 years old.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges and denied sexually assaulting the children.

Sentencing

National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson Lumka Mahanjana said the magistrate ordered the sentences to run concurrently.

“He also ordered the families of the victims be notified should Bapela be considered for parole.”

During sentencing, Bapela asked the court, through his legal representative, to deviate from imposing the prescribed minimum sentence. 

Prosecutor advocate Don Sithole told the court Bapela was known to them and their families, and he was supposed to protect them.

“Instead, he decided to betray that trust in the worst possible way, by taking the victims’ innocence and exposing them to sexual activities at a tender age.”

Sithole also read into the record in court the victim impact statement prepared by social workers that the minor boys were emotionally and psychologically affected by the incident such that one of the boys repeated grades at school and is now running a risk of being expelled because of his age.

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NPA welcomes sentence

He asked the court to impose a sentence of life imprisonment. 

However, Magistrate Lesego Makolomakwe, in her sentencing, said she found that there were substantial and compelling circumstances justifying the deviation from the prescribed minimum sentence.

This included that Bapela was described by his family as a slow learner and that at the time of the incident he was still young.

Mahanjana said while the NPA would have preferred a minimum sentence of life imprisonment to be handed down, “the prosecution accepts that the sentence handed down is a competent one and hopes that Bapela will benefit from rehabilitation programmes while incarcerated”.

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