/ 14 October 2008

A convoluted tale of sex and violence

Two men accused of raping and beating up a young Pretoria woman near a hotel in February last year claimed on Tuesday she had consented to have sex with them.

Louis Brits (20) of Mayville admitted that he had beaten up the woman after he and his friend Dirk Grobler (23) had had sex with her.

He said this was because she insisted they should go home with her and, when they refused, started pushing them around.

Grobler said he had sex with the woman in her car and then pushed her away when she insisted he should come home with her.

However, he claimed he had left Brits alone with her on a dark corner in the early hours of the morning and had nothing to do with an attempt to murder her.

A police officer earlier testified he believed the woman would not survive after he found her naked, bleeding and struggling to breathe on the street near the Maders Hotel in Mayville, Pretoria.

The woman, a mother of three young children, is now so severely disabled that she is confined to a wheelchair and cannot speak coherently.

Brits claimed the victim had approached them in the hotel and insisted on dancing with them. She then accompanied Grobler to her car, where they had sex, and he saw Grobler hitting her.

Afterwards, she accompanied them to a dark place around a corner where she had sex with them both before having sex with Grobler again. No violence or force was involved, he said.

He insisted that both of them had assaulted the woman when she started pushing them around and that he had left Grobler behind with her, but Grobler put the blame for the attack squarely on Brits’s shoulders, insisting he was not involved.

Brits admitted that he had approached four vagrants who were sleeping in a doorway nearby and asked one of the men if he wanted to have sex with the woman as well.

Both accused admitted to removing the woman’s car radio, but said it was the other one’s idea.

Two homeless men earlier told the court how they and two friends had heard the woman being raped and beaten up. The group had ignored the woman and left her dying in the street because ”they did not want to get involved” and were afraid of the police.

The trial continues. — Sapa