|
'You switch off'
01/08/2007 20:09 - (SA)
|
|
|
 |
|
| ANC supporters show their support during a protest against crime.(Dries Liebenberg, Beeld) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Scottburgh - A woman has told the High Court on Wednesday she "didn't feel like" she was part of her own body as a man raped her on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast.
The woman, who may not be identified, said: "I wasn't there. When something like that happens, you switch off."
The Bachelor of Commerce student was the second victim to testify at the trial where Mthokozisi Mbambo, 29, Sithembiso Shelembe, 23, and Wonder Mchunu, 26 are accused of raping her and two friends at a beach-house in Pennington, south of Scottburgh, on December 29 last year.
The three men are accused of attacking and robbing a Gauteng couple later that night.
Moments before she had been asked if she had a boyfriend and how many times she had had sex with him.
Asked by prosecutor Dorian Paver if the man had said anything while he was raping her, she replied: "He said that I had lied and that I wasn't a virgin."
The nervous, quietly spoken woman, took a break to compose herself before cross-examination, where it emerged that she had not identified any of the three men at an identification parade in January.
Asked if she could identify her rapist, she said Shelembe had been her attacker.
'Very traumatised the day of the ID parade'
Advocate Dean Govender asked: "On the day of the identification parade you could not identify any one. How is it that seven months later you could identify him?"
"The day of the ID parade I was very traumatised; I had to write an exam and then do an ID parade. He was there," she replied.
Earlier in the day, forensics expert Superintendent Huibrecht Botha told the court that DNA testing of blood samples taken from Shelembe and Mchunu had linked the two men to the rape victims.
Botha explained that according to statistical analysis it was nearly impossible for the DNA profile of Shelembe and Mchunu to be linked to another person.
DNA recovered from saliva on two cigarette butts, from a cloth and the DNA retrieved from two of the women, matched the that taken from Shelembe.
DNA from Mchunu was retrieved from one of the women. However, Mbambo's DNA did not match any of the samples sent to the police laboratory in Pretoria.
|
