A 37-year-old man from Springs was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Springs Regional Court on Thursday for raping a 6-year-old boy.
On 6 April 2017, while the boy and his friends were playing soccer at a church in Duduza, they went into a shack where the man was reading a religion book and he read to them, said National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson Lumka Mahanjana.
The other children later left to play outside, leaving the boy in the shack with the man. The man took the child to another room and raped him.
When the boy got home that afternoon, he told his mother what had happened. The mother called the police.
The man was arrested that night after the boy identified him and has been in custody since his arrest.
He pleaded not guilty to the charge of rape, but during cross-examination admitted that he had raped the child.
Prosecutor advocate Adele Erasmus emphasized that the traumatic effects of sexual abuse are arguably the most complex and pervasive in terms of the impact on a child’s life. Therefore, Erasmus argued, life imprisonment would be the only suitable sentence as there were no substantial or compelling circumstances favouring a lesser sentence.
The NPA welcomed the sentence.
-The Citizen
