Life behind bars for raping disabled teen

A Cradock youth has been sentenced to life imprisonment for raping a mentally disabled teen.

The case was made all the more horrific by the fact that Siyabulela Nkumbi, 21, was already awaiting trial for raping an eight-year-old boy in 2013 when he raped the disabled teen in his Lingelihle home in October last year.

While Nkumbi claimed the sex with the mentally disabled girl was consensual, a witness said the child had been weeping while he raped her.

Nkumbi admitted he knew the child was mentally disabled.

To make matters worse, the doctor who examined her testified that he recognised the 15-year-old from a previous occasion on which he had examined her for another rape some two years previously when she had been just 13.

A social worker described the girl as very childlike, immature and vulnerable.

She functioned according to her mental age of an eight-year-old child.

Judge Jeremy Pickering found Nkumbi had failed to accept responsibility for either rape and had shown no remorse whatsoever.

This boded ill for any prospect of rehabilitation.

A clinical psychological evaluation of him had found that his abuse of various substances, his penchant for abusing vulnerable victims and his refusal to take responsibility for his actions put him at high risk of committing future sexual offences.

Pickering said he agreed that raping a vulnerable person such as a child with a mental impairment rendered the rape a “most despicable one”.

He said there were no substantial and compelling circumstances that would allow him to sentence Nkumbi to anything less than life.