SECUNDA – The Secunda Regional Court sent a man who raped his own daughter, to life imprisonment on Monday, 6 May.
The 45-year-old man stood trial for the rape of two girls (both 11-years-old at the time), but was eventually only convicted and sentenced for raping one of the victims.
The eMbalenhle man’s sexual abuse of his own daughter began in 2015 after the girl’s mother ran off to KwaZulu-Natal, leaving the child in the father’s care.
According to the police, the father repeatedly raped the 11-year-old girl over several months.
He then took in a girlfriend from Mozambique and her daughter (also 11-years-old) later that year.
The girlfriend also left her daughter with the man at his house in Ext 14 while she travelled to Mozambique in December 2015.
She returned in the second week of January 2016.
The man pounced on the girl as soon as the mother left and repeatedly raped the child while the mother was away.
A neighbour noticed something was wrong with the child and reported it to the social workers in Evander.
The culprit’s biological daughter eventually also came forward and told the social workers and the police what her father had been doing to her.
The police arrested the man in January 2016.
During the investigation, the police also discovered that the father had been using someone else’s identity to get work at Harmony Mines.
He used the identity documents of a deceased man, and had been arrested and prosecuted on this name, although his daughter and relatives knows him by another name.
The case was investigated by Sgt Hezekiel Malapela from the police’s unit dealing with family violence, child protection and sexual offences (FCS).
Magistrate Graham Cupido found the accused guilty on 18 April of rape on his own child.
The rapist was however acquitted on the charges of raping the other girl, because she could not testify at the trial.
Her mother had taken her back to Mozambique.
The police tracked down the mother of the biological daughter and the girl is now in her custody.
