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Namibia: 30-Year Prison Term for Rape
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The Namibian (Windhoek)
17 April 2008
Posted to the web 17 April 2008
Werner Menges
Windhoek
A YOUNG resident of the Caprivi Region was sentenced to an effective 30 years' imprisonment after being convicted in the Katima Mulilo Regional Court on four counts of rape yesterday.
The then 20-year-old Jerome Mabuna Sambi was arrested on charges of rape in late November 2006.
He was accused of repeatedly raping a 12-year-old girl in the hut where he was staying at Shakwa, a village in the Muyako area some 45 kilometres south of Katima Mulilo, on the evening of November 19 2006.
Sambi's trial before Magistrate William Kasitomo ended yesterday with the Magistrate convicting him on four counts of rape and sentencing him to a 15-year prison term on each of the charges.
With the sentences on the first and second charges and also on the third and fourth charges ordered to be served concurrently, Sambi was sentenced to an effective jail term of 30 years.
He had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
He told the court at the start of his trial that he was a churchgoer who would not do something like the things he was accused of, and who would have said so if he had done something like that.
The girl at the root of the allegations against Sambi told the court that he had lured her to his hut with sweets.
Once she was in the hut, he detained her through the night, she said.
During the night, he raped her four times, the girl alleged.
She said he threatened her and at times covered her mouth with his hands to stop her from calling for help.
Sambi took the girl to her aunt's courtyard at the same village the next morning.
With the aunt continuing to pressure the girl to say where she had been during the night, she eventually told the aunt the next day that Sambi had raped her, the court heard during the trial.
The court also heard evidence that Sambi admitted to relatives of the girl that he had slept with her in the same hut that evening - while Sambi however denied having said this.
Sambi also denied evidence that he had told the Police on the day after his arrest that he and the girl had sex, but that this had been consensual.
According to medical evidence placed before the court during the trial, a doctor who examined the girl after a charge had been laid with the Police found swelling on her private parts.
The doctor concluded that it was an indication that she had had sexual intercourse in the days leading up to the examination.
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Sambi stood his trial without legal representation. Public Prosecutor Pieter Smit represented the State.
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