A man convicted of raping his 15-year-old daughter did irreparable harm to her, a Windhoek High Court judge said before sentencing him to 25 years’ imprisonment on Thursday.
“Instead of protecting the complainant, the accused violated the sanctity of his own daughter [and these] actions inflicted far-reaching consequences and irreparable harm,” judge Claudia Claasen said during the sentencing of the convicted man.
“The complainant will for the rest of her life have to battle the stigmatisation and psychological and emotional wounds,” Claasen added.
She also said she regarded it as particularly aggravating that the man not only exploited his daughter’s love and trust, but she became pregnant as a result of an incident in which he committed incest with her.
“Children are supposed to look to their parents for guidance and protection, but in this case the father had unscrupulously turned the tables on the complainant,” Claasen remarked.
The man, who is a 54-year-old former police officer, was convicted on charges of rape and incest four weeks ago.
Claasen found that evidence heard during his trial proved he raped his daughter at a camping site near Henties Bay in December 2009.
The man’s daughter was 15 years old at the time.
Claasen also found that a sexual act involving the man and his daughter took place at Oshikango in the Ohangwena region during October 2012 and that this amounted to the crime of incest.
The complainant told the court her father sexually abused her for the first time during a camping holiday at the coast in December 2009.
After she had gone with him to Angola, where he was working, he continued to abuse her sexually and impregnated her three times, she testified.
Two of her pregnancies were terminated with pills that her father bought, she said.
Her third pregnancy was terminated through a legal abortion in Namibia, after she had reported to her aunt in January 2013 that her father had been raping her.
After the termination of that pregnancy, a DNA test showed the accused was the father of the fetus his daughter had been carrying.
The complainant’s aunt testified during the trial that her niece told her “my father is making me his wife” when she made the first report about the sexual abuse to which she had been subjected.
The man denied guilt on all charges during his trial, which started in November 2019.
The accused did not express any remorse after he was found guilty, which is an indication that there is no accountability on his part for his deeds, Claasen said before sentencing him to 18 years’ imprisonment on the rape charge and a prison term of seven years on the count of incest.
State advocate Palmer Kumalo represented the prosecution during the trial.
Defence lawyer Joseph Andreas represented the accused.
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