For the third time in six weeks a Cape Town court has wrapped up a rape and attempted murder case with tough sentences
Marianne Merten
Karriema Viljoen* was not in court this week when the men who raped, stabbed, slit her throat and left her for dead were sentenced to long periods of imprisonment.
The oldest of her attackers was jailed for life in the Cape High Court and two youths drew 25-year sentences.
Viljoen was sodomised and forced to perform oral sex, beaten, stabbed with a bottleneck and choked in August 1999. She testified in open court against her ex-boyfriend Nigel Sampson (19), Gino Davids (20) and Benjamin Knoop (48). The trio was convicted on her birthday at the end of March. Sampson and Knoop were also found guilty of raping another woman hours earlier the same night.
Still bearing the scars of the attack, Viljoen was described by the court as a brave, reliable witness. But she has not returned to school since the attack.
One of her relatives said the girl has had nightmares ahead of this week’s sentencing. Messages telling her not to attend court had been sent to the family home and she stayed away. Relatives of the three convicts attended court handing over little packages, a jersey and shoes, or snatching the odd word during breaks.
It was the third time in six weeks the court has wrapped up rape and murder or attempted murder cases. At the end of March the eldest two of the three men convicted for the rape and murder of 14-year-old Valencia Farmer in June 1999 were given double life terms.
Farmer died after identifying several of the men who raped and stabbed her more than 50 times in an abandoned house in Eerste River. A 16-year-old youth was jailed for 23 years, as the minimum sentence of life imprisonment did not apply because he was younger than 16 at the time of the rape.
Two weeks ago two teenaged gangsters received double life jail terms for raping and murdering two Elsies River, Cape Flats, schoolgirls in April 2000.
Bianca Gosh (18) and Amelia Jansen (17) were raped because they did not have the money the Riaan van der Merwe (19) and Wesley Dyson (18) wanted to steal from them to buy drugs and were then shot dead on a rubbish dump to prevent them from identifying their attackers.
During Sampson, Davids and Knoop’s trial it emerged that they decided to kill Viljoen to prevent her from “making a case”, or reporting them to the police.
In passing sentence, Judge Willem Louw described the heavily tattooed Knoop, who has previous convictions dating back to 1968, as “a hardened criminal who was a danger to society” and jailed him to double life terms for the two rapes, 15 years for the attempted murder and eight years for indecent assault.
The 1997 Criminal Law Amendment Act stipulates mandatory life imprisonment for adult offenders in cases like murder, killing during hijackings or aggravated robbery and rape.
Sampson was jailed for 25 years for each of the rapes, 15 years for the attempted murder and five years for indecent assault. Davids was sentenced to 25 years for raping Viljoen and 15 years for trying to murder her.
The two younger men, who had apologised for their actions and told the court they would accept stiff sentences, did not receive the minimum life sentence for rape in line with recent judicial decisions in the Cape and elsewhere that give courts discretion if offenders were aged between 16 and 18 at the time of the crime.
Their age counted in their favour, the fact that neither was a drug addict, that they were under the influence of Knoop and alcohol and that both had held steady jobs after dropping out of school because of their families’ financial difficulties.
But the trial again highlighted inadequacies in the criminal justice system. Davids was treated as a first offender although he apparently had already been sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment for housebreaking. The state could not prove this because official records of the convictions could not be traced.
The issue of gangs also emerged. Sampson and Davids joined gangs at Pollsmoor prison for their protection while awaiting trial, according to a social worker’s testimony.
Sampson has started sporting crude gang tattoos: the number 28 of the prison gang by that name behind his left ear, another on his forearm and, most recently, a little book featuring a dollar sign at the back of his neck where it joins his shoulders.
During sentencing, the court noted the argument of Sampson’s lawyer that if authorities allowed prison gangs to exist, then joining these could not be held against the accused.
*Not her real name