Sheriff who raped mistress's daughter fails to get convictions overturned

12 February 2018 - 06:30 By Dave Chambers
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The girl’s mother‚ from Rylands‚ reported Anwar Fisher to the police after finding text messages from Fisher‚ including photographs of his erect penis.
The girl’s mother‚ from Rylands‚ reported Anwar Fisher to the police after finding text messages from Fisher‚ including photographs of his erect penis.
Image: 123RF/canjoena

A deputy sheriff and police reservist who repeatedly raped his secret mistress’s 14-year-old daughter has failed in an attempt to have six convictions overturned.

Anwar Fisher‚ 43‚ of Mitchells Plain‚ appealed to the High Court in Cape Town against a regional court verdict‚ but Judge Patrick Gamble said on Friday his “bare denial simply did not measure up” in the face of “overwhelming and persuasive evidence” that he raped and sexually assaulted his daughter’s schoolfriend.

Gamble said: “The background circumstances tell a story as old as time itself: the illicit‚ lustful exploitation by an older man of the blind infatuation of a teenager‚ much like Lolita in the celebrated novel by Vladimir Nabokov. “But this case has a twist unlike so many of the others.”

That twist was the fact that when the rapes happened — between August and December 2011 — “unbeknownst to the rest of their respective families‚ [Fisher] and [the 14-year-old’s mother] had been involved in an adulterous relationship since approximately 2007.

This relationship was conducted clandestinely‚ intensely and intimately.” In mid-2011‚ when the teenager’s mother was pregnant with her sixth child‚ “[Fisher] commenced directing his attention towards [the girl] and soon became intimate with her”‚ said Gamble.

The girl’s mother‚ from Rylands‚ reported Fisher to the police after finding text messages from Fisher‚ including photographs of his erect penis. He was convicted in 2015 of four charges of statutory rape and two charges of sexual assault.

The court was told the rapes happened in Fisher’s car. On two occasions‚ he picked the Grade 9 pupil up from her Athlone school and raped her on the way home.

At the same time‚ he was still involved with the girl’s mother‚ who told the regional court Fisher’s wife learnt of the affair in October 2011 and demanded an apology from both of them. “Mutual undertakings of trust were thereafter given that the affair had been terminated‚” said Gamble.

“That notwithstanding‚ the affair continued apace until about a week before the arrest of [Fisher].” The deputy sheriff turned out to be “an inherently dishonest person”‚ said Gamble‚ adding that his teenage victim gave evidence to the regional court in a “clear and coherent manner”.

He pointed out that she withstood cross-examination well even though it was interrupted in 2014 when she complained that she could not concentrate because she was fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.


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