NPA case administration failure allows child rapist to roam free
30 September 2024
A child rapist has been free and active in society for more than two years because his appeal against his conviction was not referred to the Pretoria High Court. It required intervention from AfriForum’s Private Prosecution Unit for the National Prosecuting Authority to do their jobs. The matter will now be heard on 17 October 2024 and hopefully bring closure for the victim and her family. The rapist cannot be named because this could indirectly identify the victim, who was a minor at the time of the offence.
The case has highlighted a trend in which matters referred for appeal are forgotten, allowing convicted criminals to walk free while justice is denied to their victims. In this case, the Pretoria Regional Court convicted the man of rape and sentenced him to life imprisonment on June 3, 2022. He was granted bail, pending an appeal.
The victim, who is now 21-years-old, was the rapist's stepdaughter. In 2018, when she was 16-year-old girl she told her mother that she had been raped by her stepfather over a four-year period beginning when she was 12 years old. She reported the crime to the police which led to the trial and conviction.
The mother approached AfriForum’s Private Prosecution Unit in November last year because there was no further progress. The Unit wrote to the Senior Sate Prosecutor in Pretoria on 11 November last year. In February this year, the NPA responded saying that it had received the appeal record on 21 November - a week after the unit demanded answers – and the appeal would be enrolled.