News & Current Affairs
Mother Gives Step-father Leeway To Rape Daughter For Two Years Under The Pretense of Rituals.
According to Limpopo police spokesperson Brigadier Motlafela Mojapelo, a Limpopo court heard that a man, who was 38 at the time, had raped his 15-year-old stepdaughter on multiple occasions over a period of two years, between 2020 or 2021, this nightmare scenario played out.
Sergeant Motlatjo Tukakgomo of the Modimolle SAPS Family Violence, Child Protection, and Sexual Offenses Unit conducted a thorough investigation into the case.
Mojapelo testified that the girl's mother would often wake her up in the middle of the night by telling her that her father had to do ritual exercises on her. However, the mother said she had no idea what was happening to her daughter.
Lieutenant-General Thembi Hadebe, provincial commissioner of police in Limpopo, has praised the severe sentence, saying that he hopes it will act as a warning to other would-be criminals.
“We commend the sterling investigations conducted by Sergeant Tukakgomo that secured the life imprisonment. This sentence will send a strong message against child rapists or molesters that the police are determined to deal with crimes perpetrated against women and children,” said Hadebe.
In a similar story, a 48-year-old father who raped his 14-year-old stepdaughter in Westenburg, near Polokwane, in November 2016 was sentenced to prison last month.
Mankweng regional court determined that the 48-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the underage victim, followed his stepdaughter home after they both attended a family party in the same area, according to provincial police spokesperson Colonel Malesela Ledwaba. The mother of the adolescent was totally abandoned at the party.
When the girl was getting ready for bed, "the accused entered her room half-naked and raped her," as Ledwaba put it.
The mother reportedly followed the couple home, where she discovered her nude husband in the hallway and a distraught daughter in her bedroom.
On January 29, 2021, while visiting her biological father in Pretoria, the victim told her stepmother about the incident for the first time.