Defence disputes rape

THE DEFENCE’S forensic pathology expert, Dr Steve Naidoo, has disputed the State’s allegation that murder accused Mortimer Saunders raped 3-year-old Courtney Pieters while she was alive.

Naidoo told the Western Cape High Court there was no indication of any sort of vaginal penetration while Courtney was alive.

In his report he said: “The accused’s version of digital penetration of the vagina after the death of the deceased is a most plausible version.”

Naidoo said there was no bruising or inflammation that could be observed. He said for a 3-year-old girl penal penetration could cause tears. “I am not convinced there are injuries (genital), if there were there is no evidence to suggest it was ante-mortem. It could’ve been post-mortem or peri-mortem.”

Naidoo said the red blood cells observed by the State’s supervising forensic pathologist, professor Johan Dempers, didn’t show a pattern of bruising. He said without the pattern it couldn’t be a diagnosis of bruising.

Naidoo said a child of Courtney’s age would have reacted to penetration had she been alive. “In the post-mortem there (was) no bleeding except from oozing blood vessels. No actual bleeding as would be in a live person.” Mortimer, who had confessed to poisoning, strangling and suffocating Courtney, denied raping her.

It is his version that he penetrated her with his fingers after she was dead. He said he had pre-ejaculated fluid on his hands.

However, an autopsy examination conducted by Dr Aloysia Ogle, under Dempers’s supervision, found that the child’s vagina had sustained tear wounds and that the vaginal opening had been stretched significantly.

In the State’s forensic pathologist’s report it was recorded that there were multiple lacerations caused by an object in her vagina.

Penetration by an adult’s penis could have been the cause.