CHARGE BUNGLE BENEFITS RAPIST

Correct me if I am wrong here, but the view of this picture seems to be focused incorrectly and it has become quite fuzzy! A new trend seems to have appeared over the last couple of years where the perpetrator seems to have all the rights and the victims rights seem to have been lost along the way! Who cares what was written on a piece of paper and that the words were not 100% accurate - the fact of the matter is that this man raped a women. Not only did he rape her, but he did so with the full knowledge that he is HIV positive - effectively giving her a "death sentence"! Quite unperturbed that he has inflicted a death sentence on someone, he was also visciously violent towards her and yet all of this seems to have been overlooked and not considered at all because "the charge against him had not been correctly framed".!

Personally, I think that it is time that we, as a society got back to the basics and instead of giving all the power to the people, who abuse it in the worst way, we give it back to the victim from who it was taken in the first place!

The rapist has given his victim a death sentence, he should be punised with the equivalent - he should be given a life sentence!

Regards
Nikki

Ingrid Oellermann November 13 2006 at 07:02AM

An HIV-positive man who raped a 43-year-old woman while knowing his HIV status, and who also "savagely" assaulted his victim during the incident last September, escaped a life imprisonment sentence on Friday because the charge against him had not been correctly framed in the charge sheet. Acting Judge Raj Badal said in the Pietermaritzburg High Court that there were two provisions under the Minimum Sentencing Act (the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1997) in terms of which Mbongwa Petros Sithole, 39, of Inchanga, would have faced a minimum sentence of life imprisonment. One of these was the fact that he was HIV-positive at the time of the rape - which is seen as an aggravating factor - and the fact that he had subjected the victim to grievous bodily harm.

However, because Sithole was not told before his conviction on the rape charge that he might face a term of life imprisonment, and was warned that he could face a maximum of 15 years' imprisonment, the High Court found it would not be proper under the circumstances to invoke the provisions of the minimum sentences Act and impose life imprisonment on him. Sithole was sentenced by Badal to 15 years' imprisonment. The judge said the Camperdown regional magistrate and the prosecutor who had dealt with the case had not been aware of Sithole's HIV-positive status until he (Sithole) had given evidence in the case and could not be blamed because only he had known his status. However, the same did not apply to the grievous bodily harm that had accompanied the rape, said Badal. "The prosecutor was armed with these facts and should have alerted the court and framed the charge sheet in terms of the (relevant) Act," the judge said. State advocate Deelan Naidoo confirmed that the failure to correctly frame the charge sheet would be investigated.

This article was originally published on page 5 of The Mercury on November 13, 2006