Five life terms for serial rapist

SERIAL rapist Aviwe Hoya was sentenced to five life terms and an additional 58 years behind bars after he was convicted of 10 counts of rape, three of robbery and five of kidnapping committed in Khayelitsha over 11 months.

One of his five victims had committed suicide after the attack. Even though the trauma inflicted on his victims could not be reversed, a mother of one of them welcomed the sentencing and described it as appropriate.

As Judge Kate Savage read Hoya’s sentence and detailed the trauma the victims had to go through during the attacks, the mother sobbed in court.

Judge Savage said Hoya “blatantly and viciously disregarded the fundamental human rights and bodily integrity of the young complainants”.

Hoya “violently attacked” his victims on their way to or from school, she added.

When he was done, Hoya “left his victims to pick up the pieces of their lives”.

“This led one of his victims to take the drastic decision of attempting to end her own life, and then to do so,” she said.

The judge said his punishment must also send an “unequivocal message that serious violent crimes such as those committed by the accused will be punished most harshly, recognising the deep and horrific life-long consequences of the accused’s brutal acts for each of the young victims”.

Showing no remorse, Hoya “conducted himself in the calculated manner of a serial offender who must be removed from society”, said Judge Savage. Prosecutor Maria Marshall told of Hoya’s modus operandi, which was to grab the victims around their neck, threaten them with a knife and demand that they go to a secluded place where he would order them to strip naked and rape them.

He robbed a 13-year-old victim of her earrings.

Another 13-year-old was robbed of her cellphone.

Hoya also took R6.50 from a 16-year-old victim and R33 and a cellphone from an 18-year-old.

He raped a 10-year-old victim twice and the 18-year-old multiple times, while holding her hostage.

Hoya escaped and went to Stutterheim in the Eastern Cape. However, the investigating officer in the Khayelitsha cases tracked and brought him back to Cape Town.

DNA evidence linked him to all the rape cases.