A 35-year-old Zwide man, who was in January convicted on three counts of rape and the assault of his estranged wife, was sentenced on Wednesday to life behind bars.
In handing down sentence, Port Elizabeth High Court judge Bulelwa Pakati said she could not find any justification for deviating from the prescribed minimum sentence of life.
At the beginning of the trial, the man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his wife, pleaded not guilty and claimed the sex was consensual.
Pakati said the man was not a suitable candidate for rehabilitation after a probation officers’ report said he never took responsibility for his actions and this made it difficult to determine if he could be rehabilitated.
“[The man] denied any wrongdoing throughout the trial and therefore showed no remorse,” Pakati said.
He was convicted on three counts of rape and one of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.
Husband convicted of raping wife gets life
Image: 123RF/canjoena
A 35-year-old Zwide man, who was in January convicted on three counts of rape and the assault of his estranged wife, was sentenced on Wednesday to life behind bars.
In handing down sentence, Port Elizabeth High Court judge Bulelwa Pakati said she could not find any justification for deviating from the prescribed minimum sentence of life.
At the beginning of the trial, the man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his wife, pleaded not guilty and claimed the sex was consensual.
Pakati said the man was not a suitable candidate for rehabilitation after a probation officers’ report said he never took responsibility for his actions and this made it difficult to determine if he could be rehabilitated.
“[The man] denied any wrongdoing throughout the trial and therefore showed no remorse,” Pakati said.
He was convicted on three counts of rape and one of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.
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Pakati found that the woman, 30, was reliable in her testimony and that her version of events which took place in the early morning hours of March 30 2018 was straightforward.
The couple had been married since December 2016 and during their marriage the woman had opened several cases of assault against her husband but had later dropped the charges.
They were still married but were not living together at the time of the assault.
On March 29 2018, the woman, who had finished her shift at a mobile clinic in Rink Street, Central, went to her cousin’s NU4 Motherwell home where she and her husband had met up.
In the early hours of the next morning and after the pair had consumed alcohol, the man requested that he spend the night with her at her flat across the road.
At the flat the man forced the woman to undress before violently raping her three times.
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During the ordeal the woman was bitten on her face, breasts and arm and had a piece of her left ear bitten off.
The man was found to have also throttled the woman while raping her.
She managed to escape from the flat and went to a neighbour for help.
“We must send out a message that violence against vulnerable women will not be tolerated,” Pakati said.
Pataki handed the man a life sentence for all three rape convictions combined.
He was further sentenced to three years for assault which Pakati said would run concurrently with the life sentence.
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