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Friday, May 23, 2008 - Web posted at 7:36:21 GMT 20 years for child rapist DENVER ISAACSALBERTO Hendricks, the 31-year-old man convicted earlier this week of raping a 14-year-old girl at a wedding party last year, deserves very little mercy and should face the full wrath of the Namibian justice system. |
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These were the words of Judge Collins Parker yesterday when he handed down a 20-year jail sentence in the High Court in Windhoek. Judge Parker said he had searched for any substantial or compelling circumstances that would allow him to show mercy to Hendricks in his judgement. However, given that the victim was a mere 13 years old at the time of the rape, and that Hendricks had just nine months previously completed a six-year jail sentence on another rape charge, any evidence given to try and prove mitigating circumstances was at best "light or flimsy", Judge Parker stated. Hendricks raped his underage victim during an outdoors wedding party at Outjo on March 31 2005. The girl testified that she was dancing when Hendricks, whom she did not know, grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the dark. He threatened her with a knife, pinned her to the ground and raped her, she told the court. She testified that at some point she shouted the name of a friend in an attempt to get help. Her friends testified that they heard this cry and ran to help her, but that friends of Hendricks chased them off by throwing stones at them. When the girl was found by a search party, including her mother, she had no underwear on, wore only one of her shoes and was crying. She immediately claimed to have been raped. Hendricks acknowledged that he had sex with the girl, but stated that she had accepted a romantic proposal to her, and that they were taking a lovers' stroll down the street when they encountered her friends. The judge on Monday rejected Hendricks's claims as "patently false". Instead of mercy, Parker said, the court was more inclined to look at deterring this type of "horrendous " offence from continuing. "The serious and deprived nature of this crime calls for deterrence to be emphasised. Parliament has said that it considers this in a serious light, and so the court should too," he said. He said one of the more serious facts he had considered was Hendricks's previous conviction of rape in the Otjiwarongo Regional court in June 1998. He was released from prison in 2004. "He refused to learn his lesson after that first conviction, and indeed nine months after being released found himself doing the same thing. He deserves very little mercy and must face the full wrath of the law," Judge Parker stated before handing down the sentence. |
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