Nigel | Wednesday
JUDGEMENT in the case of alleged incest between a 66-year old Delmas grandfather and his 33-year old daughter was expected in the Nigel Regional Court on Wednesday.
Robert Fedder was charged in August with incest after forensic tests showed that he could have been the father of the eldest son of his daughter, Breggie Kamffer.
Kamffer faces two charges of incest, one with her father and the other with her 40-year old brother, Jan, who committed suicide in March.
Robert Fedder, his 61-year old wife Elsina, son Jan and Kamffer were arrested on a farm in the Delmas district in Mpumalanga more than a year ago after one of the other nine daughters notified welfare services of the incestuous relationship between her brother and sister.
The elder Fedders were initially only charged with aiding and abetting incest, concealment of birth and fraud, charges they could still face after Wednesday’s judgement.
In August the case was postponed for further forensic tests to verify the initial results that Robert Fedder had fathered his daughter’s eldest son, who is now 16.
In October the father and daughter went on trial. Forensic experts testified that it was 99,9% certain that Fedder was the father of his daughter’s son. Forensic tests indicated beyond reasonable doubt that Jan Fedder had fathered his sister’s younger son, who is now eight years old.
At the time of the family’s arrest, allegations were made that Kamffer had been pregnant at least ten times. Apart from the two surviving children, police could find no indication of what might have happened to the other babies. They dug up several alleged burial sites on the different farms where the family had lived in the past 16 years, but found nothing.
In a statement submitted as evidence during the trial, the sister who blew the whistle on the relationship said that Jan Fedder had assaulted Kamffer regularly.
Lettie Bezuidenhout wrote in her statement that Fedder had assaulted Kamffer while she was pregnant and that the baby was stillborn. She said it was buried under ”the tree on the farm.”
She also wrote in her statement that Fedder had smoked dagga and even sniffed thinners. He also drank heavily and assaulted Kamffer while intoxicated.
Bezuidenhout said in her statement that Fedder had never forced Kamffer into having a sexual relationship with him. Kamffer had, according to her sister, climbed through a window to go to Fedder where he slept outside the house in a caravan.
During the evidence presented by the investigating officer, Inspector Yolande Geldenhuys, it also emerged that Kamffer had, after marrying a man nine years her junior in September last year, gone back to her brother and that she had resumed her relationship with him.
Kamffer has since separated from her husband, Stefan Kamffer.
Jan Fedder committed suicide in March, apparently because he did not have access to his children.
The boys, aged 15 and seven at the time of their parents’ arrest, were taken to a place of safety, where they remain.
When they were found on the farm, the boys were severely neglected and neither was attending school.
Fedder and Kammfer’s legal representative, Zahid Omar, said in his closing arguments that the State had not succeeded in showing that Kamffer, her brother and her father had intended to commit incest.
He said Kamffer could have been drugged and abused by both her father and brother.
He also said that the forensic tests did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that Robert Fedder was the father of Kamffer’s eldest son. – Sapa