ELDERLY MEN SENTENCED FOR RAPE OF TWO MINORS
The Hermanus Regional Court has sentenced a 63-year-old man to twenty years of direct imprisonment following his confession to raping two minor children who were left in his care. The State asked the court to impose life imprisonment for each of the rape charges, but the court deviated from the prescribed minimum sentence of life imprisonment citing his age. The accused pleaded guilty in terms of Section 112 (2) of Act 51 of 1977, of the Criminal Procedure Act and confessed that he raped the minors between March 2021 and September 2021 after their parents asked him to look after them. The State does not name the accused or the address where the incident happened to avoid indirectly identifying the victims and exposing them and their families to secondary victimisation. In his plea statement, he told the court that he rented a room from the children’s parents in 2020 and moved to another residency three months later. The mother of the two girls, aged 10 and 11/ 12 years at the time, asked him to look after her daughters while she and her husband were at work at a guesthouse.
He would help the children with their homework, and they trusted him. One afternoon they fell asleep in his room, and he raped the eldest and molested the younger one. He then told them not to tell their parents. He claims that he never hurt them physically, but he now realizes that he hurt them mentally and emotionally. Arguing in aggravation of sentence, regional court prosecutor Harold Engelbrecht, asked the court to sentence the accused to life imprisonment for each of the rape charges. He argued that the couple entrusted the accused to look after their children while they went to work. He instead abused that trust and committed gruesome crimes. He further argued that the victims were vulnerable children who trusted the accused and that gender-based violence was a scourge affecting children in our communities. The State had a compelling case against the accused after consulting the victims.
The court sentenced the accused to 20 years direct imprisonment for each rape charge but ordered the sentences to run concurrently. It also ordered him to be entered into the National Register of Sex Offenders. The NPA accepted the sentence imposed by the court and appealed to parents to be vigilant about the safety of their children.
