Details have emerged in court of a horrific rape attack on a mother on her Hankey farm during which the attacker allegedly tried to force her teenage son to have sex with her.
A 32-year-old suspect – charged with 16 offences, including four counts of kidnapping, one of rape, one of attempted rape and one of compelling a minor to witness a sexual act, among others – appeared briefly in the Port Elizabeth High Court on Tuesday.
The dishevelled suspect with a red jacket thrown over his shoulders, who is not being named as he has not yet pleaded, indicated to the court he did not have legal representation because he had been in custody and unable to appoint his own lawyer.
In the indictment before court, it is alleged the suspect – a worker employed at the farm where the attack took place on March 25 2018 – first tried to force his employer’s wife’s 15-year-old son to have sex with his mother.
When this did not happen, he tied the three children up and left them in the lounge while he took the 44-year-old businesswoman to her bedroom and allegedly raped her.
It is alleged he then attempted to rape the woman’s 13year-old daughter but, after pleas from the mother, he raped the mother again and forced the young girl to watch.
None of the alleged victims are being named because they are either minors or victims of a sex crime.
On the evening of the alleged attack on the farm in the Klein Rivier area near Hankey, the woman’s three children, aged nine, 13 and 15, at the time, ran into her bedroom after hearing shots being fired.
The woman pushed the bedroom door closed after an intruder entered the house.
He allegedly fired several gunshots through the bedroom door and entered the room, threatening to shoot one of the children.
He demanded to know where the safe was and it was pointed out to him.
The woman and children were then ordered into the lounge and tied up with wire.
He allegedly ordered the woman afterwards to drive him to town so he could withdraw money from her bank account.
It is alleged he withdrew about R8,000 from her Absa account before ordering her to drive back to the farm to collect her children and go to a hospital. The suspect was arrested later at the Kwa Guna administrative area in the Nketlana Location, a few kilometres from the Lesotho border.
Some of the property taken during the attack was allegedly found on him.
At the suspect’s first appearance in the Hankey Magistrate’s Court on April 3 2018, another woman recognised him as her alleged attacker while he stood in the dock.
Speaking to The Herald at the time, Doris Mketshani, 45, identified him as the man who had allegedly attacked her on February 6 2018 at her home on Craig Daws Farm near Patensie.
Mketshani said the man – who was known to her husband – had entered her house, wielding a long knife, and allegedly demanded that she hand over a firearm which her husband kept in the house. Mketshani said she had told the man she did not know where the gun was kept and he had then allegedly demanded money from her.
They had then tussled over the knife before Mketshani managed to get it away from him – injuring her hand and leg in the process.
The attacker fled.
Mketshani said the man had phoned her husband earlier that morning and asked him where he worked and where their children were.
On Tuesday, the Hankey accused told the court he did not have legal representation as he had been in custody and had been unable to appoint someone.
“If I were not in custody, I would have been able to appoint my own attorney – so I will have to apply for legal aid,” he said.
Legal Aid advocate Jodine Coertzen told the court she would process the necessary forms and would be on record for the suspect in the interim.
“I will also be available for the trial,” Coertzen said.
Judge Irma Schoeman postponed the matter to May 27 for trial. The suspect will remain in custody.