Rapist gets 368 yrs in jail
2009-07-10 21:14
Cape Town - Serial rapist Tsediso Letsoenya, 38, was sentenced to five life terms by the Western Cape High Court on Friday for five rapes committed during a two-year reign of terror on the Cape Flats.
He was jailed for an additional 243 years on 65 charges including attempted rape, indecent assault, common assault, aggravated robbery and crimen injuria.
A former able seaman in the navy, Letsoenya prowled poorly-lit railway stations at night in search of rape victims.
Letsoenya seemed unconcerned as Justice Abe Motala described his crimes as humiliating, degrading and a brutal invasion of his victims' privacy and dignity.
The gravity of rape could hardly be over-emphasised, Motala said. He found that all the rapes were planned, carefully thought out and carefully executed.
Letsoenya had subjected his victims - including men, women, boys and girls - to extreme and prolonged humiliation, he said.
They had been forced to not only undress completely in his presence, but to lie on top of one another and perform sexual acts to arouse him.
In some instances he forced the men with his female victims to rape them before he did so himself. In other instances he made strange men rape them.
In one instance, he forced two young children to hold their mother's legs while he raped her.
In another, he forced a father and his daughter to undress. "The naked father was ordered to rape his own naked child, but to his great credit, he had refused to do so," said Motala.
Letsoenya told young school girls and sometimes young couples waiting for a train that the last train had already left, persuading them to follow him to a nearby taxi rank.
Instead, he led them to an open field where he forced them to undress before leading them naked to another place where he raped them.
Afterwards, they had to go back to get their clothes and dress, giving him time to escape in the dark.
- SAPA