LACK OF PROOF FREES MAN FROM DEFILEMENT CHARGE

• She told me she was 19 years old • We watched porn before sex

A night of porn, booze, and sex with a Standard Six pupil could have easily landed an unemployed grown man of Lobatse, Kgotla Moeng, behind bars, but he had the last laugh after being set free by the court following prosecution’s failure to prove their case.

Moeng, who stood accused of defiling a minor, walked free after Lobatse Magistrate, Gofaone Morwaeng, acquitted and discharged him of the offence.

Moeng was accused of unlawfully sleeping with the 13-yearold minor back in June at his home in Woodhall, Lobatse.

The facts of the case are that Moeng and the minor were in the company of their friends at a bonfire followed by a time of gallivanting around the streets. The court heard that later on in the night, the duo decided to sneak into a room where they entertained themselves with pornography.

“The prosecution case was further to the effect that around 2200hrs the other individuals who were earlier in the company of the accused and the complainant dispersed to their respective homes and the two remained together in the bedroom as the complainant had claimed that she could not go to their home as there was no one. Therefore, the two shared the bed and in the process the accused forcefully undressed her and proceeded to rape her. The subsequent morning the complainant left the accused saying that she was going home,” reads the judgment in part.

However, the 13-year-old girl, according to facts of the case, did not go home, instead she went to a friend’s house.

In his defence, when giving evidence in chief, Moeng said the sex was consensual and that she had in fact - during the course of the night - told him she was 19 years old and had failed From 3.

During cross-examination, however, the minor, who told the court she lived two minutes away from Moeng’s home, failed to answer why she did not go home after their night considering that her house was in close proximity.

“It was further in evidence that the subsequent day she only went home around 2300hrs where both the prosecution witnesses testified that she was reluctant to tell the truth about where she had spent the night the previous day and only after being beaten did she only state that she spent the night with the accused,” the court heard.

“I find no fault in the accused person having fallen for the inconvenient truth because the way the complainant had handled herself after spending the night with him was not consistent with the conduct of a 13-year-old child. It is common cause that the 13th June, 2021 was a Sunday, logically, the latest time a child her age would be home was 1800hrs. A 13-year-old would generally not stray, spend a night with a stranger and never go back home especially where the expectation was that she was going to school the following morning.”

In the end, the court ruled that the state had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused had defiled the complainant.