Supreme Court puts Teek back on trial

THE victory that former Judge of Appeal Pio Teek scored in the High Court in late July 2006 when he was acquitted on charges of child abduction and sexual molestation was undone in the Supreme Court yesterday.

In a judgement given by three Judges of South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal, Teek’s discharge on six of the eight charges that he faced in the High Court in mid-2006 was set aside. Judges Piet Streicher, Kenneth Mthiyane and Fritz Brand, in their capacity as Acting Judges of Appeal of Namibia’s Supreme Court, referred Teek’s case back to the High Court, where another South African Judge, Ronnie Bosielo, found him not guilty on all charges on July 28 2006.The three Acting Judges of Appeal, who three weeks ago heard an appeal from the State against Teek’s acquittal, ordered that Teek’s trial should now continue and be finalised before Judge Bosielo.The main charges on which Teek (62) was on trial in the High Court were two counts of rape, two counts of abduction, alternatively kidnapping, two counts of committing or attempting to commit an immoral or indecent act with a child under the age of 16 years, and two counts of supplying liquor to a person under the age of 18.BRAKWATER claimsIt was alleged that on the evening of January 28 2005 he picked up two girls, aged ten and nine respectively, with his car in Katutura. He then drove with them to his house in the Brakwater area north of Windhoek.On the way to his smallholding and again at his house, it was alleged, he sexually molested the 10-year-old girl. He was also accused of having given the girls alcoholic drinks at his home.Teek denied all of the charges. In a plea explanation given at the start of his trial, he claimed that he picked up the children because they looked dirty and hungry, and that he took them to his house to give them some food. At his house, he however fell asleep, with the result that he returned the two girls to Katutura only the next morning, he informed the court.In the ruling in which he discharged Teek on all of the charges after the prosecution had closed its case against him, Judge Bosielo found that the testimony given by the two girls was of such poor quality that no reasonable court could find it reliable and credible. He listed 21 aspects on which the two girls, in his view, contradicted each other.In fact, stated Appeal Judge Brand, who wrote the judgement delivered yesterday, there was ‘ample room for conviction of (Teek) on all the charges against him, save perhaps for the crime of abduction’.Judge Brand pointed out that contradictions in two witnesses’ testimony could not be used to reject both witnesses’ evidence as untruthful. A contradiction in itself only proves that the testimony of one of the persons is erroneous, but it does not prove which one, he noted.A significant number of the 21 perceived contradictions listed by Judge Bosielo actually amount to no contradictions at all and were included in the list of contradictions because of misinterpretations or wrong evaluation of the evidence, Judge Brand stated.Many aspects of the two girls’ testimony on which they were in agreement were either not disputed by Teek or corroborated by other evidence, Judge Brand added.This included evidence in which both girls disputed that they had told Teek that they were hungry, ‘which destroys the reason advanced by him as to why he had taken them to his house,’ Judge Brand stated.It also included testimony from both girls that when they drove past a Police road block on their way to Teek’s house, Teek told them to hide in the car. ‘This was not disputed on behalf of the respondent (Teek) and seems to cast a long shadow over his professed noble intentions,’ Judge Brand stated.Both girls also told the court that Teek offered them beer, with one of them also saying he had offered them brandy. Both also testified that Teek had shown them a pornographic video, and a Police officer who visited the house the next morning claimed to have seen the cover of such a video lying in the house, Judge Brand further recounted.Both girls further testified that Teek made them swim in their panties as he sat and watched, that he then put them on his lap and made strange movements, that he appeared in front of them in the nude, and that he invited both of them to sleep with him in his bed, the Judge continued.’For these reasons I believe that, on the evidence before the trial Court, there is ample room for conviction of the respondent (Teek) on all the charges against him, save perhaps for the crime of abduction,’ Judge Brand said.’ABDUCTION’On the charge of abduction – which is defined as the unlawful taking of an unmarried minor out of the control of his or her custodian with the intention of enabling someone to marry or to have sexual intercourse with that minor – there was no direct evidence that Teek intended to have sexual intercourse with the two girls, which is an essential element of the crime, Judge Brand noted.A date for the resumption of Teek’s trial will still have to be set.When the case returns to Judge Bosielo’s courtroom, it will be up to Teek and his team of defence lawyers to decide if he will be testifying in his own defence, or will be calling witnesses to testify in his defence, or if he will be closing the case in his defence without presenting any evidence to the court.Judge Bosielo will thereafter again have to hand down a judgement in the matter. Whichever way it goes, the losing side in the case could then again decide to try to appeal to the Supreme Court to have that decision reversed.Deputy Prosecutor General Danie Small and Innocentia Nyoni represented the State. Teek was represented by Cape Town lawyer Anton Katz and Richard Metcalfe, Louis du Pisani and Deidre Sauls of the firm Metcalfe Legal Practitioners.werner@namibian.com.na