A father found guilty of raping his 14-year-old daughter, who challenged his conviction and the life sentence he received in the Mahikeng high court, has been sent back to prison.
The man told the court he had been wrongly convicted and his daughter had made up the allegations against him because she was angry with him for refusing to buy her a laptop.
However, the court found the girl’s account of how she had been assaulted, how she had tried to fight her father off and had managed to gouge his cheek with a piece of broken mirror to be more believable.
The Mahikeng high court found the trial court had not misdirected itself, and the life sentence was provided for by the prescribed minimum sentence rule.
The father, who cannot be identified to protect the identity of his minor daughter, pleaded not guilty at his trial and chose to remain silent throughout. During sentencing he was declared unfit to possess a firearm and his name was entered on the sex offenders register.
Aggrieved by the conviction and sentence, the father took his case on appeal.
This was the rape of the appellant’s biological daughter who was 14. She had the right to regard her father as a loving person deserving of her respect. This came to a crashing disillusionment
— Mahikeng high court ruling
The court held he was the biological father of a teenage girl identified only as KM, and he lived in an area known as Skoti in North West. KM lived with her mother and stepfather. On the day of the incident her father arrived at KM’s home and asked her mother for taxi fare as he wanted to go to town.
Despite no longer being in a relationship with him, the mother agreed and gave him money. He returned later and was drunk. He produced R100, which he gave to KM as pocket money.
She walked with her dad as he headed back home. Along the way he asked KM if he could use her phone and she told him the battery was flat. She agreed to his suggestion that they go to a tavern near his house, where he put her phone on a charger and asked her to buy him a drink. After a while she told him she did not want to wait around for the phone to charge fully, so he invited her to come and wait at the place where he was staying.
When they got to the house she was reluctant to go inside the one-room house and wanted to wait outside. When he pulled her into the house she asked him why and he said he did not want to start rumours that he had brought a girlfriend home.
KM questioned this, saying as his daughter this could not be true, but sat down on the bed. He started touching her thighs and she pushed him away, demanding to know what he was doing.
“Do you not see what I want to do? I want to sleep with you, have sex with you,” he told her.
KM replied: “How could you have sex with me being your daughter?”
He punched her in the face and throttled her until she passed out.
When she regained consciousness, KM realised her father was raping her. She grabbed a piece of broken mirror off the dressing table and stabbed her father in the cheek and neck. She gripped his dreadlocks and pushed him against a dressing table. She pulled away and grabbed a brick near the door and hit him on the head.
She managed to quickly dress and escape as he threatened to kill her if she told anyone. Back home she stayed outside, sitting on a rock in front of the house, trying to process her shock.
A few days after the attack KM logged onto Facebook and told her father’s cousin he had raped her. She explained to the woman she was afraid to tell her mother what had happened and asked the woman to tell her mom.
The cousin told KM’s mother, who told her stepdad. They reported the case to the police and took KM to Potchefstroom Hospital. Because the medical check happened several days after the attack, there were no visible injuries but it was determined there had been sexual penetration.
KM’s mother was so upset by the attack that she started losing mental focus and regularly had suicidal thoughts. She passed away before the case went to trial.
She fought back but he overcame her resistance. Clearly it was all about him and a total disrespect and disregard for his own daughter. Ultimately it was all about his violent lust
— Mahikeng high court ruling
Testifying during his appeal, the father said on the day he left with KM to go to the tavern, he had done so with the intention of getting change for R200 so he could give her R150. He said he gave her the money and she had gone back home. He claimed there had been no visit to his house or an attack.
He said KM’s motive for lying was that she was angry with him for arguing with her mother, and she was upset because he had never cared for or paid support for her. He also believed his refusal to buy her a laptop had “spurred KM to fabricate the allegations”. He denied asking her to buy alcohol for him.
The appeal judge found the trial court had not erred in evaluating witness testimony or in finding the state had proven its case beyond reasonable doubt.
“In the absence of an irregularity or misdirection, the court of appeal is bound by such credibility findings, unless it is convinced such findings are clearly incorrect,” the court said.
“On a vigilant examination of the record, it cannot be found the appellant’s right to a fair trial had been breached in the sentencing phase.
“This was the rape of the appellant’s biological daughter who was 14. She had the right to regard her father as a loving person deserving of her respect. This came to a crashing disillusionment. As the trial court found her virginity was broken by the person who brought into this world, she is bitter and ended up having a tendency to commit suicide.
“She fought back but he overcame her resistance. Clearly it was all about him and a total disrespect and disregard for his own daughter. Ultimately it was all about his violent lust.”
The court dismissed the father’s appeal against his conviction and sentence.
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