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Namibia: 17-Year Prison Sentence in Okahandja Rape Trial
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The Namibian (Windhoek)
23 April 2008
Posted to the web 23 April 2008
Werner Menges
Windhoek
A FORMER farmworker accused of breaking into a house at Okahandja and raping his employer's wife in late 2005 has been convicted as charged in the Windhoek Regional Court and sentenced to an effective 17-year prison term.
Facing a count of housebreaking and two charges of rape, Fillip Shilulu (33) claimed before Magistrate Dinnah Usiku that he had in fact been invited into the house of his employer's 62-year-old wife, and that she had consensual sex with him over a period of three months, or even as far back as September 2001.
Magistrate Usiku rejected Shilulu's claims when she gave her verdict in his trial on Thursday.
She convicted him on all three charges.
During his sentencing, Magistrate Usiku told Shilulu that he had not shown any remorse throughout his trial.
He had in fact made the complainant in his case out to be a liar, the Magistrate said.
Shilulu pleaded not guilty to all three charges when his trial started on March 31.
He also told the court that the basis of his defence was that the complainant had invited him to have sexual intercourse with her.
Previously, when he first pleaded not guilty in the Okahandja Magistrate's Court on June 29 2006, Shilulu made no mention of these claims, the Magistrate noted in her judgement.
The 62-year-old complainant testified that her dogs' barking woke her up in her house at Okahandja during the early morning hours of December 5 2005.
She got up to let the dogs out, and went to lie down again to wait for the dogs to return into the house.
She dozed off, and was then woken up by Shilulu, who was standing next to her bed.
Shilulu had by then been employed for about two and a half weeks by her husband, who owned a farm, the court heard.
According to the complainant, Shilulu pushed her down on her bed, threatened to shoot her, slapped her in the face and then raped her.
She offered him some brandy, thinking this might put him to sleep, she said.
After going with her to her kitchen to get him the drink, he returned with her to her bedroom, where he first threw her to the floor and then threw her on her bed and again raped her, she testified.
She said in an attempt to get him out of the house, she later asked him if she could take him home.
He agreed, and she drove with him some distance out of the town, dropping him off on the way to the farm where he was working for her husband.
By then she had promised him that she would not say anything to her husband.
When she got back home she phoned her husband to tell him about what she had been through.
She also called the Police, while her husband called a private security company, which arrested Shilulu shortly after his arrival at the farm.
It was later discovered that a metal security door giving access to a veranda at the house had been partly bent open at the bottom.
The complainant denied Shilulu's claims during the trial.
She said while Shilulu was employed by her husband she respected him, but that the incident had left her disappointed, distrustful of men, and not the same person she had been before.
When he testified, Shilulu first claimed to have had sex with the complainant over a three-month period before the incident.
He then also told the court that these contacts actually dated as far back as September 2001.
None of this was put to the complainant when he had an opportunity to cross-examine her, though.
Magistrate Usiku rejected his defence as something that could not reasonably be true.
She sentenced Shilulu to five years' imprisonment on the housebreaking charge, and to a 17-year jail term on the two rape charges.
She ordered that the sentences should be served together.
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Public Prosecutor OJ Lino prosecuted, while Shilulu chose to stand trial without legal representation.
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