Rape accused claims love affair with married victim

A MARRIED Pumula North woman left home at around midnight to help her mother who was under attack at a nearby house but ended up meeting a man who raped her.

Initially, the 22-year-old woman asked her husband to escort her and when he refused, she went alone and met the alleged rapist, Freddy George Josam, 31, on her way.

"I left my house at about midnight with the intention of checking on my mother who was being attacked by a drunkard. As I was walking, Josam approached me from the back, grabbed me by the waist and instructed me to be silent before raping me once," said the woman in her testimony.

"It was the first time I came across him and he kept on ordering me to stop looking at him as he raped me. He at one point asked me to accompany him to his house so we could sleep there. I managed to escape when he told me to run as fast as possible and that's when I headed home and notified my parents about it," she said.

Josam, however, claimed that he was in love with his alleged victim. He claimed that he had slept with her twice in their two- day relationship.

"I asked this woman out and she agreed and we had sex hours later in a bushy area near Pumula High after I bought her a packet of chips. We also had intercourse the next day and that's when she started crying claiming that she is a married woman who was having marital problems," said Josam in his defence before regional magistrate Sibongile Msipa-Marondedze.

"I even accompanied her to the shops at one point and all was well until I got arrested for allegedly raping her. She had guts to leave her husband sleeping at home at midnight in order to see me because we were in a relationship."

Josam maintained that he had consensual sex with the 22-year-old woman who managed to track him down with the help of her husband. Magistrate Msipa-Marondedze remanded Josam in custody to January 21.

Prosecuting Concilia Ncube alleges that on October 26 last year, the woman left her house heading for her mother's house. "While she was on her way, Josam ran after her and grabbed her from behind before stabbing her twice on the shoulder with an unknown object," said Ncube

Josam forcibly pulled down the woman's pair of trousers and panties and ordered her to bend over, the court heard. He thereafter dropped his pair of trousers to knee level and raped the woman once.

Ncube said: "After the assault, the woman proceeded to her mother's house where she informed her parents who accompanied her to the police to make a report leading to Josam's arrest."