Werner Menges
21 May 2008
Windhoek — WHAT started out as a wedding party at Outjo at the close of March 2005 ended up as a rape conviction in the High Court in Windhoek this week.
At the age of 31, Alberto Hendricks now has two convictions for rape on his criminal record, after Judge Collins Parker found him guilty on a charge of rape in the High Court on Monday.
Hendricks is scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday, and could face a minimum prison term of 20 years, as prescribed by the Combating of Rape Act, or up to 30 years or more, as was requested by State advocate Zenobia Barry after Hendricks had been pronounced guilty.
The sentencing will not be an altogether new experience for him.
Hendricks had also been convicted in the Otjiwarongo Regional Court on a count of rape in June 1998, Judge Parker was informed after he had delivered the verdict on Monday.
In that earlier case, Hendricks was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment.
Before that, he had also been found guilty twice on housebreaking charges, for which he was sentenced first to a nine-month prison sentence in 1995 and then to a three-year jail term in 1996.
Hendricks stood trial before Judge Parker on a charge that he had raped a girl at Outjo on March 31 2005, which was two days before the girl's 14th birthday.
He also faced alternative charges, under the Combating of Immoral Practices Act of 1980, of committing or attempting to commit a sexual act, or an indecent or immoral act, with a child under the age of 16 years, or enticing a girl under the age of 16 to commit an immoral or indecent act.
Hendricks pleaded not guilty to the charges.
His defence lawyer, Johan van Vuuren, informed the court that Hendricks admitted having had sexual intercourse with the girl on the evening of March 31 2005, but this was consensual and he was not aware that the girl was still under the age of 16.
The girl told the court that she was at an outdoor dance party following a wedding at Outjo when Hendricks, whom she did not know, pulled her by the arm into the dark.
While Hendricks was taking her along a street towards some bushes, the girl at some point shouted the name of a friend of hers in an attempt to get help.
Two of her friends told the court that they heard this cry and that they tried to run towards the girl and Hendricks, but a friend of Hendricks chased them off by throwing stones at them.
According to the girl, Hendricks forced her to the ground amongst some bushes, pinned her down and raped her.
He was threatening her with a knife, she told the court.
After he had finished with her, he appeared to "freeze" and looked dazed, she told the court, and she used this opportunity to grab the knife from him and throw it away, before running towards some houses nearby.
Her friends had in the meantime raised the alert, and the fleeing girl - crying, grass and sand in her hair, with no underwear on, and wearing only one shoe - encountered her mother and another woman, who had launched a search for her.
She immediately claimed to have been raped.
According to Hendricks, though, he had made a romantic proposal to the girl, which she accepted, and they were taking a lovers' stroll in the street when her two friends saw them before they ended up having consensual sexual intercourse in the bushes.
Judge Parker rejected this claim as "patently false".
He also accepted Barry's argument that if Hendricks and the girl had consensual intercourse as he claimed, it was beyond human experience that she would have left her underwear behind and have walked with one shoe, crying, from the scene of their encounter.
Judge Parker also noted in his judgement that during a bail application by Hendricks, he had stated that he did not have permission to have intercourse with the girl, and agreed that he had raped her.
Hendricks gave that evidence while being represented by a lawyer, and in the presence of his lawyer, the Judge also noted.
He commented that even without that evidence on what Hendricks had stated during his bail application, he has still found ample and credible evidence to prove Hendricks's guilt.
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