Lindsay Dentlinger
30 July 2008
An Acacia Park woman broke down and sobbed in the Cape High Court as she recounted how she was raped twice in a Khayelitsha field while her son and daughter were made to pin her legs down.
The woman, 46, and her boyfriend, 56, were the first of a score of men and women to testify against a former SA Navy sea official facing 104 charges - mostly of rape and indecent assault - as the result of attacks between 2001 and 2005.
Speaking loudly, the woman stared at the ceiling, tears welling as she told the court that she had no doubt that the alleged attacker was the accused sitting in the dock, Tsediso Letsoenya.
Only 10 minutes into her testimony on Tuesday, the court adjourned to allow her to regain her composure during repeated questioning by Letsoenya's defence advocate, Nehemiah Ballem, as to whether she was sure her attacker was the man she had identified in a police identity parade.
"I know the person I saw. When something like that happens to you, you will know the exact culprit," she said.
On Tuesday the woman, and later her boyfriend, told Judge Abdullah Motala they had been returning from a party early on a Saturday evening in 2003, when they crossed a field in Khayelitsha near the police station, to get to their then home.
The couple said they had been walking ahead of their three children - two were the woman's, and the third, a boy then 11, the man's youngest - when a man with a gun appeared from behind a bush.
He allegedly demanded money, and when they had none, told them to undress.
When her boyfriend refused, the accused allegedly hit him across the face. The man testified that he had told the attacker: "You can rather kill me," and escaped to call for help.
He said he didn't look back while the woman and children were undressing and ran toward the police station, calling for help from motorists.
The man's son later escaped and arrived naked at the police station shortly after his father.
The woman said that once undressed, she had been made to lie on her back and her trembling children had been told to each pin down one leg while she was raped.
The man had tucked the gun into the back of his pants, which he did not remove during the rape, she said.
Asked why her children had not tried to wrestle the gun from their attacker, she replied: "They expected me to protect them. They were in a dangerous situation and didn't think about something like that."
Letsoenya allegedly ordered the woman's daughter to lie down. When she refused, he had hit the girl, the woman said. The woman had begged her attacker not to rape her daughter.
"I screamed and said rather come to me. I'd rather die in (her) place." And she had been raped again, she said.
Having testified in Xhosa, the woman, after being told she could step outside the witness box, threw her hands in the air and exclaimed loudly in English: "Oh, thank you Lord!"
Her boyfriend said he had been at the police station when his girlfriend arrived, still clutching her clothes.
He was set to continue testifying on Tuesday.
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