Court rejects stepfather's rape appeal

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, but he maintained that what he had done did not amount to the “worst kind of rape”.

- ZELDA VENTER

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

It was worst 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 sleeping and she was unaware. The appellant would come into her room, she said, and move her little brother from the bed.