News / Regional
'I raped my daughter to cure HIV,' man tells court
20 Jul 2013 at 07:55hrs | Views
AN HIV positive Plumtree man has admitted raping his daughter, 17, and infecting her with the virus so that he could be cure, apparently on the advice of his dead mother.
The man, 45, who is from Ngwanyama area under Chief Wasi in Mangwe district but cannot be named to protect the identity of the daughter, was sentenced to 20 years in jail by Bulawayo magistrate Judith Zuyu on Wednesday.
The court was left stunned when the man pleaded guilty to a charge of rape and pleaded for leniency saying: "Your Worship, I am sorry; please I beg for leniency since I committed the offence in compliance with what I was shown in a dream by my late mother. She was telling me that I should sleep with my daughter so that I could avoid death."
Prosecutor, Tinashe Dzipe, said the man started telling his daughter about his strange dreams in 2007.
The court heard that on one occasion, he invited the girl to his bedroom and told her that he had been instructed to sleep with her in order to be cured from his ailment.
Dzipe said from that day he went on to rape the girl several times until something in October 2007 when she fell ill and was diagnosed with the virus. The girl left her parents' homestead to live with her uncle to whom she narrated her ordeal.
However, the uncle did not take her seriously and left to go to South Africa without doing anything. The girl only reported the matter to the police recently leading to her father's arrest.
The man, 45, who is from Ngwanyama area under Chief Wasi in Mangwe district but cannot be named to protect the identity of the daughter, was sentenced to 20 years in jail by Bulawayo magistrate Judith Zuyu on Wednesday.
The court was left stunned when the man pleaded guilty to a charge of rape and pleaded for leniency saying: "Your Worship, I am sorry; please I beg for leniency since I committed the offence in compliance with what I was shown in a dream by my late mother. She was telling me that I should sleep with my daughter so that I could avoid death."
The court heard that on one occasion, he invited the girl to his bedroom and told her that he had been instructed to sleep with her in order to be cured from his ailment.
Dzipe said from that day he went on to rape the girl several times until something in October 2007 when she fell ill and was diagnosed with the virus. The girl left her parents' homestead to live with her uncle to whom she narrated her ordeal.
However, the uncle did not take her seriously and left to go to South Africa without doing anything. The girl only reported the matter to the police recently leading to her father's arrest.
Source - Metro
