A child holding a teddy bear. The victims are aged seven and 14 years old. File Picture
A 49-year-old serial rapist from Vredenburg in the Western Cape has been sentenced to 30 years of direct imprisonment in the Vredenburg Regional Court.
The man will not be named to protect the identity of the victims, due to one of his minor daughters being friends with the victims.
He was convicted on three counts of sexual assault, two counts of using children for child pornography, a count of creation of child pornography, a count of possession of child pornography, three counts of sexual grooming of children, three counts of child rape and a count of exposure of pornography to children.
The court heard the father of three and claimed born-again Christian was married for 14 years and targeted girls between the ages of seven and 12-years-old who visited to play with his daughter.
He was arrested at his house in Vredenburg on April 28, 2022, after the grandmother of one of the victims reported the string of sexual offences to police.
State Prosecutor Chandre Minnaar told the court the abuse had been spanning for a period of over nine years between 2013 and 2022.
She said all victims were children under the age of 14 and the incidents took place at the rapist’s home.
Three of the four victims were his daughter’s friends.
He entered into a plea and sentencing agreement with the State.
“The accused violated the trust relationship as the father of the complainants’ friend, cunningly plotted to ensure that he isolated the complainants to abuse them sexually and that he sexualised the complainants at such a young age by exposing them to pornography to reduce their resistance to the subsequent sexual offences and the rapes he committed,” Minnaar submitted to the court.
She further argued the rapist exhibited a clear pattern of predatory behaviour by carefully selecting young and vulnerable child victims and that the victims experience humiliation and degradation with the exposure of pornography being used for the creation of child pornography, the sexual violations, and the sexual penetrations.
Minnaar further argued he defiled the sanctity of his family home with his illicit and wicked sexual offences against the complainants when his wife was at work.
“The sexual offences he committed established numerous violations of the rights of the children to privacy, dignity, and bodily integrity,” she submitted.
“He is guilty of offences against one of the most vulnerable groups within our society, our young children, and the irreparable psychological damage he caused to the complainants cannot be understated.”
The court sentenced him to a total of 135 years of direct imprisonment, but ordered some of the sentences to run concurrently, thus he will be serving 30 years direct imprisonment.
The court also ordered his name to be entered into the National Register for Sexual Offenders and that the guardian of the relevant complainants be notified of his sentences. It was further ordered that he be declared unfit to work with children and unfit to possess a firearm.
robin.francke@inl.co.za
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