The mother of a convicted rapist was praised in court last week, for the part she played in bringing her son to justice, reports the Northern Natal News.

The woman’s 28-year-old son was found guilty in the Newcastle Regional Court on January 29 of raping his mentally impaired niece (the woman’s granddaughter).

Because the victim is related to the rapist and his mother, their names cannot be made public.

“Instead of being over-protective of her child, she is the one who took the complainant to the police station to open a case. She then took the complainant to the Madadeni Thuthuzela Care Centre to be examined, phoned the police to arrest her son, and came to court to testify,” remarked the presiding magistrate, S Sibisi.

“I am impressed with this mother and the role she played in ensuring the law takes its course. Her evidence could not be faulted in any way.”

An exhausting trial

The trial commenced on September 8 and was successfully prosecuted by state prosecutor, Jabulile Zondi, who led the evidence of four state witnesses, including the victim, her grandmother, their neighbour and the doctor who examined the victim.

According to evidence led during the trial, the incident occurred on the night of May 17, 2024, in the woman’s home in Blaauwbosch (a township in Newcastle), where she resides with her son (the rapist), as well as the victim (her granddaughter), and her granddaughter’s siblings.

The victim of the rape was the first to testify. An intermediary was used to facilitate the victim’s testimony in court after her mental impairment became apparent while she was being sworn in.

A psychological assessment of the victim revealed that, even though she is legally an adult, she has the mental capacity of a child and attends a special needs school.

In camera proceedings to shield mentally-impaired from trauma

The court proceedings were held in camera to protect this vulnerable witness from public exposure and further trauma.

The victim testified that on the night she was raped, her grandmother had gone away for the weekend to visit with relatives, leaving her and her siblings at home.

Her sleep was broken when she heard her uncle knock on the door late that night, but she was unable to let him in.

She explained that her older brother had locked the doors and taken the house keys with him when he went out earlier that evening.

Her uncle first tried to break the burglar guard at the back door to gain access to the house. When that failed, he remembered that his bedroom window was broken.

He asked for the victim’s help to remove the Masonite board, which was secured to the window frame with cables, and she helped him.

After climbing in through the window, he forced his niece to undress at knifepoint, raped her, used his t-shirt to wipe away DNA evidence and threatened to stab her if she cried or if she told her siblings what he had done.

Her brother returned with the house keys at 07:00 the next morning, and, as soon as he unlocked the door, she ran across the road to a neighbour she trusts and told her neighbour what happened the previous night.

Neighbour helps grandmother to get victim examined

This neighbour was the second state witness to testify.

The neighbour testified that the victim’s grandmother had asked her to keep an eye on her home while she was away for the weekend.

She said the victim was shaking when she arrived at her house that morning. She instructed the victim not to have a bath and phoned the victim’s grandmother, asking her to return home urgently.

The two women (the grandmother and her neighbour) accompanied the victim to the police station and then to the Thuthuzela Care Centre.

Taking the witness stand, the grandmother explained that the victim has been in her care from the age of four, after her mother died.

A few years ago, the victim was involved in a car crash and the injuries she sustained left her mentally impaired.

She further testified that her son was a drug addict and would often leave the house for days at a time without any explanation.

He was not home when she left to visit with relatives that weekend. She said she was heart-sore when she heard what her son had done to her granddaughter in her absence.

When she and her granddaughter returned home from the Thuthuzela Care Centre, her son was nowhere to be found.

She next saw him at Boxer when she went out to do some shopping and urged him to come back home with her. She then called the police from her neighbour’s house and he was arrested.

Son admits to using drugs

His mother recalled that he told the police who arrested him that he was sorry and wouldn’t do it again.

In court, her son admitted to slapping his niece but denied raping her.

He said he slapped her after she refused to help him re-fix the Masonite board to the window frame, adding that he had been smoking Mandrax that day and fell asleep shortly after climbing in through his bedroom window.

However, the medical examiner who attended to the victim confirmed that vaginal penetration had occurred.

Sibisi said she found the victim to be a competent witness and the evidence provided by the other state witnesses to be satisfactory and consistent. On the other hand, she found the version put forward by the accused improbable and inconsistent.

The matter was postponed to February 12 for the submission of pre-sentencing reports.

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