Father gets date for rape, incest trial verdict

A former police officer accused of raping his teenage daughter over a three-year period is due to receive the verdict in his trial in the Windhoek High Court in October.

Judge Claudia Claasen postponed the delivery of her judgement in the ex-policeman’s trial to 17 October after hearing closing arguments in the matter yesterday.

The accused man (54) is facing two counts of rape, alternatively incest, three charges of child trafficking and one count of assault by threat.

Claasen found him not guilty on one charge of rape and a count of assault by threat in February 2022, after the prosecution concluded its case against him and before he testified in his own defence.

The state is alleging that the man raped his daughter on various occasions between December 2009, when she was 15 years old and October 2012, by when she had reached the age of 18.

During that time, he also impregnated her.

After her pregnancy was terminated, DNA analysis showed the accused was the father of the fetus his daughter had been carrying.

The state is also alleging that the man committed the crime of child trafficking by taking his daughter with him to Angola in January 2010, January 2011 and January 2012 for the purpose of sexually exploiting her.

He allegedly continued to rape the girl while they were in Angola.

The remaining charge of assault by threat is based on allegations that the man in June 2011 threatened to kill his daughter if she reported to anyone what he had been doing to her.

The name of the accused is being withheld to protect the identity of the complainant in his case.

The man denied guilt on all charges when his trial started in November 2019.

When he testified in his own defence, he said his daughter’s allegations that he had raped her over a period of three years were lies through which she was trying to hurt him because she felt he had rejected her love for him.

He acknowledged, though, that one sexual incident involving him and his daughter took place and said this happened at Ondjiva in Angola when he woke up one morning with his daughter in his bed.

State advocate Palmer Kumalo argued yesterday that the accused fabricated the alleged incident at Ondjiva because a Namibian court does not have jurisdiction in respect of something that happened in Angola.

Kumalo also argued that the DNA result which showed the accused was the father of the fetus his daughter had been carrying proved she had been sexually abused and corroborated her testimony that she had been raped by her father.

The complainant was cross-examined for three days when she testified and her version that her father raped her remained the same, Kumalo said.

He argued the state proved beyond reasonable doubt that the man raped his daughter and trafficked her for sexual purposes.

Defence lawyer Joseph Andreas argued that the complainant gave different versions of events to a psychologist, the police and in court during her father’s trial.

“This complainant is not a credible witness. Her evidence is simply unreliable,” Andreas said.

He also argued that except for her own words there was nothing else that corroborated the complainant’s version in court.

The state did not prove the charges remaining against the accused and his version of events should be accepted as reasonable and possibly true, Andreas said as well.

The accused, who was arrested in January 2013, is free on a warning from the court.

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