A deep-sea fisherman who participated in the gang rape of a 14-year-old girl but protested his innocence to the very last was on Thursday jailed by the Cape High Court for 16 years.
Stanley Swartz (41) appeared before Judge Burton Fourie, who said the fact that Swartz had already been in custody awaiting trial for four years saved him from life imprisonment (25 years).
The judge said that had Swartz received a life sentence, he would have spent the next 25 years in prison, which, coupled with the four years already in prison awaiting trial, would have meant he would be in jail for 29 years.
The judge said this would be unfair.
Swartz was referred to the Cape High Court for sentencing after he was found guilty in the Somerset West Regional Court for the gang rape of a girl under the age of 16.
His defence counsel, Tania Kloppers, contended that Swartz should have been given the benefit of the doubt and found not guilty on the basis that the rape had happened in a dark room where others were present.
She said the girl could not have seen Swartz in the dark, and that she had mistakenly identified him as one of the three rapists.
Of the other two rapists, one was killed in a car smash and the other, a youth, was sent to a reformatory.
The judge said the girl had known Swartz well and had recognised him by his voice, as he had spoken to her during the rape.
Asked by prosecutor Simphiwe Vakele whether he felt sorry for what he had done, Swartz told the court he could not comment as he was innocent.
The judge said Swartz’s reply indicated he was without remorse to the very end.
He said rape is a humiliating and degrading offence and a serious invasion of a woman’s privacy, and it was made even worse by the fact that Swartz’s victim was only 14 at the time.
He said the victim had been 20 when she testified in the Somerset West Regional Court, but had been so traumatised by the fact that she had to be in the same courtroom as Swartz that she had to deliver her testimony from another room by means of closed-circuit television. — Sapa