Security guard guilty of defilement

Lebogang Mosikare | Thursday July 28, 2016 12:10

 

Defilement attracts a minimum sentence of 10 years in jail.  Luck was on Nthobatsang Sediba’s side when his sentence was wholly suspended for five years on condition that he does not commit a similar offence within the stipulated period.

However, Sediba who comes from Monarch, was sentenced to six strokes.

The court heard that Sediba (then 20-years-old) in 2014, defiled a Junior Secondary School going girl aged 15 years also from Monarch location. “The accused is a first offender who pleaded guilty to the offence and did not waste the court’s time unlike other accused persons who knowing very well what they have done, decide not to plead guilty and come to waste the court’s precious time,” Basupi said.

The difference between the accused’s age and the victim’s age, Basupi said, was minimal at the time he committed the offence.

“Their age difference was four years which in my view is an extenuating circumstance in this matter.  Youthful exuberance also played a big role for the accused to commit the offence. However, cases of defilement are on the increase in my jurisdiction. I deal with them everyday either at arraignment or trial stage,” said a concerned Basupi.

Basupi said most of the perpetrators are older men who are determined to destroy the future of young girls by either infecting them with sexually transmitted diseases or make them to drop out of school. “In my view, defilement is a soft form of rape because in most cases the young girls do not consent to those gruesome sexual activities,” he said.