Rape complainant ‘did not tell full truth’

The woman who accused Windhoek City Police spokesperson Fabian Amukwelele of rape did not tell the truth when she testified during Amukwelele’s rape trial, a magistrate said in the Windhoek Regional Court yesterday.

The complainant in the rape case against Amukwelele (41) made “an unsettling and shocking revelation” near the end of her testimony in Amukwelele’s trial, when she said she concealed information that may be damaging to him, magistrate Leopold Hangalo commented before acquitting Amukwelele on counts of rape and kidnapping.

It follows from that revelation by the complainant that the court was not told the truth of what exactly happened between her and Amukwelele, Hangalo added.

He said most of the 10 prosecution witnesses who testified during Amukwelele’s trial – including the complainant – were evasive in answering questions posed to them, resulting in contradictory and inconsistent testimony that was fatal to the state’s case.

Hangalo concluded that the evidence heard during the trial, which started in April this year, “falls significantly short” of the required standard of proof on which a conviction can be based, with the result that the evidence against Amukwelele was unreliable.

The magistrate continued: “In this regard [Amukwelele] is entitled to the benefit of the doubt. I have doubt in my mind and reject the state’s evidence. The accused person stands to be acquitted on all counts.”

The state alleged that Amukwelele prevented a female employee of the City of Windhoek from leaving his home in Windhoek, where she was visiting him, on the evening of 10 January 2020, and that he raped her the next morning, after she had spent the night in his flat.

Amukwelele denied guilt on both charges on which he was prosecuted.

He told the court a romantic relationship between him and the complainant started in January 2020.

Amukwelele denied that he kept the complainant at his flat against her will, and said he and the complainant had consensual intercourse in his flat on the morning of 11 January 2020.

The complainant, however, told the court Amukwelele did not want to move his car so that she could get her car out of his yard when she wanted to go home on the evening she visited him at his flat. She said she then spent the night at the flat. The next morning, Amukwelele raped her, despite her telling him multiple times to stop, she said.

She went to a pharmacy to get contraceptive medication the day after the incident, and also went to see a medical doctor, whom she told that she had been raped, the complainant related as well.

The doctor advised her to report a rape case to the police, but she did not do that until she discovered in March 2020 that she was pregnant, the court also heard. She registered a complaint with the police after she had been informed that she would be allowed to terminate the pregnancy only if it had occurred as a result of rape.

Hangalo noted that the complainant was a single witness on the rape charge.

Commenting on the complainant’s behaviour after the alleged rape, he said she was courageous enough to buy contraceptive medication on the day after the incident, but was not courageous enough to report it to the police at that point. Although she was advised to report the incident to the police at that stage, she did not do so until she had discovered that she was pregnant, Hangalo added.

He remarked: “One can only conclude that she did that to build a case in anticipation of terminating the pregnancy if the emergency contraceptive failed.”

Hangalo added that was evident when the complainant said, at the end of her testimony under cross-examination, that she concealed crucial information on the alleged rape that might be damaging to Amukwelele.

On the kidnapping charge, the complainant did not testify that she was unlawfully deprived of her freedom of movement while she was at Amukwelele’s flat, and also said Amukwelele did not use force or physical violence to make her overnight at the flat, Hangalo recounted in his judgement as well.

Amukwelele was arrested in April 2020, and was held in custody for about four weeks before he was granted bail in an amount of N$7 000.

Defence lawyer Sisa Namandje represented him during his trial.

Public prosecutor Bernadine Bertolini represented the state.