World turns its back on Hewitt
APPEAL: HE ‘FELL FROM GRACE TO THE PRISON FLOOR’
Victims welcome Wimbledon ace’s expulsion from Tennis Hall of Fame.
Sexual assault survivors of convicted rapist and paedophile Bob Hewitt have welcomed his expulsion from the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, in the United States.
“The expulsion is a result of a conviction against Hewitt on two counts of rape and one count of sexual assault,” read a statement from the Hall of Fame.
Hewitt’s appeal against his sentence of six years and R100 000 to be paid to the department of justice for antiabuse campaigns will be heard on May 3 in the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein.
His legal team will argue because no vaginal injuries were caused in the case of one girl and also because he stopped “the moment” another said penetration was painful, the “moral blameworthiness of the appellant is substantially reduced”.
Hewitt’s counsel, advocate Johan Engelbrecht, also stated in papers Hewitt’s “fall from grace to the prison floor shamed him in public, with disastrous effects”.
Hewitt would not again resort to sexual abuse of children. “He is, in any case, too old for such conduct,” said Engelbrecht.
The papers said judges should be wary of considering the views of members of society “who stand at the extreme” and went on to say organisations such as Women and Men Against Child Abuse (WMACA) should be ignored as it was “clearly biased against the offender”.
WMACA spokesperson Germaine Vogel said the organisation was biased against the act of sexual violence, no matter who committed or caused it.
“The sexual abuse of particularly women and children continues unabated and to argue that because no physical scars were evident after Hewitt’s abuse of his victims is an outrage,” Vogel said.
“Rape is rape. It is a heinous crime.”