A disabled 65-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the rape of a 10-year-old girl near Hazyview, Mpumalanga police said on Tuesday.
Captain Leonard Hlathi said the man, whose legs were deformed and therefore had to walk with the aid of crutches, allegedly raped the girl in Nyongani Trust near Hazyview at about 3pm on Monday.
The girl was on her way to a friend’s house with money to buy electricity when the man called her and asked her to go to the shop for him.
”When she got into the house, the old man followed her and grabbed her,” Hlathi said.
Afterwards the man allegedly told the girl not to tell anyone and added he would give her his pension grant money when he received it.
Later the girl told her mother she had been raped, after the mother noticed her daughter was bleeding.
”It is also alleged that it is not the first time the old man has raped children,” Hlathi said, adding, though, that no other such cases had been reported.
The man was expected to appear in the Hazyview Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday. — Sapa