A woman who was crying as a rapist removed her bikini pants was told by the man to ”shut up” or he would ”blow” her head off, the Scottburgh High Court heard on Thursday.
The woman was the third of three rape victims to give testimony before the court in a trial where Mthokozisi Mbambo (29), Sithembiso Shelembe (23) and Wonder Mchunu (26) are accused of raping her and two friends at a beach house in Pennington, south of Scottburgh, on December 29 last year.
The three men are accused of attacking and robbing a Gauteng couple later that night.
Mbambo has also been charged with attempted murder. Mbambo was diagnosed as being HIV ”as far back as 2000” according to the indictment. The indictment said that Mbambo raped the women ”in spite of his knowledge of the potential transmission of a virus leading to fatal consequences”.
The woman testifying on Thursday told the court that Mbambo ”pushed my shoulders on to the bed so that I was lying and then he tried to remove my swimming costume”.
”Then I started crying and I couldn’t breathe. Accused number one [Shelembe] came and told me to shut up. If I continued he [Shelembe] would blow my head off.
”Then I just closed my eyes and tried to calm myself and then someone raped me, I didn’t look, I don’t know who, because my eyes were closed.”
She was unable to tell the court whether it had been Shelembe or Mbambo who raped her.
Later that night, she told the court, she was raped by Mchunu.
Asked how the ordeal had affected her, she said: ”It’s made me uncertain of myself and scared a lot. I’m always expecting something to happen.
”Like when I’m walking down the road, I am always expecting someone to jump out a bush. I wasn’t always expecting the worst [before the December 29 attack].”
She said that her parents had battled to deal with the ordeal. ”They don’t always know how to handle the situation.”
Asked by Advocate Dean Govender whether she had been mistaken about the identity of Shelembe, she replied: ”I saw him. No two people look the same except if he has a twin brother.”
On Wednesday forensics expert Superintendent Huibrecht Botha told the court that DNA testing of blood samples taken from Shelembe and Mchunu as well as from two cigarette butts found at the scene and a semen stain on a piece of cloth had linked the two men to the rape victims.
Botha explained that according to statistical analysis it was nearly impossible for the DNA profile of Shelembe and Mchunu to be linked to another person.
DNA recovered from saliva on the two cigarette butts, a cloth and that retrieved from two of the women matched the DNA taken from Shelembe.
She said that it was a 99,999% certainty that the DNA was that of Shelembe. — Sapa