A man who was sentenced to life imprisonment for raping his stepdaughter for more than two years - since she was 11 - appealed his “shocking” sentence as he maintained that what he had done did not amount to the “worst kind of rape”.

The Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, however, did not agree with him and said he deserved the sentence he had received. Two judges on appeal said the stepfather did not show any remorse at all for what he had done.

If it was not for the fact that the child wrote in her diary about her harrowing ordeal at the hands of the accused and that her mother read her diary, she would have had to endure the suffering for much longer.

The child testified that the appellant was her stepfather, and he lived with them in the same house. The offences took place at night when her mother was working and slept over at work. The appellant would come into her room, she said, and move her little brother from the bed.

He then proceeded to have sexual intercourse with her without her consent. It started when she was 11 and ended when she was 13. She told the court that she wrote down the encounters she had with the appellant in her diary.

The mother confronted her about her written entries, and the mother reported him to the police. Charges were brought against the stepfather, and after he was arrested, he spent more than five years awaiting trial in prison.

The stepfather, on appeal, complained that the magistrate who had sentenced him to life imprisonment should have found that there were mitigating factors warranting a lesser sentence.

The imposed sentence is “shockingly inappropriate and induces a sense of outrage,” he said, as he was the one who was taking care of the child and her mother.

In maintaining that this was not “the worst kind of rape”, the stepfather said she was never seriously injured, as is the case with many rape victims. Nor was she infected with any sexually transmitted disease, he pointed out.

The court commented that life imprisonment is the prescribed minimum sentence for the rape of a person more than once and for the rape of a person under the age of 16 years.

The Criminal Law Amendment Act is peremptory and gives no discretion to a court to deviate therefrom in the absence of substantial and compelling circumstances to do so.

The aggravating factors in this case far overshadow any mitigating factors. He was a father figure to the complainant, and she was left in his care by her mother, the court stated.

It further found that he had threatened her with death if she told on him and threatened that if she did report him, he would kill her mother.

“She was only 11 to 13 years old at the time she was exposed to the appellant’s deviant sexual behaviour,” the court stated.

It added that it is evident from the record of the proceedings that the child was extremely emotional during her testimony, and it can also be gleaned from the victim impact report that the complainant suffered emotional and psychological trauma because of the rapes.

The court was of the view that a sentence of life imprisonment is proportionate to the crime committed and the sentence is a just one.

zelda.venter@inl.co.za

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