Magistrate Deon Minnie (Sexual Offences Court Magistrate) sentenced Sipho Matthew Manana (47) to a term of life imprisonment for the rapes he have committed on a 12 year old boy in 2011.<\/p>\n
Manana wanted the Court to accept the fact that children always run to him when they meet him in the street, as mitigation for sentence.<\/p>\n
During sentencing Magistrate Minnie mentioned that Manana places a high premium on his Christian values “and is in fact so revered by his followers that he regularly lays his hands in prayer on children in the township at their request.”<\/p>\n
The boy even testified that he loves\/likes the accused, but this just proved to the court how effective his grooming tactics were.<\/p>\n
The accused engaged in grooming when he often bought the child gifts and gave him money, raping the boy on more than one occasion, and making it extremely difficult for the victim from a poor single parent household, to disclose the offences.<\/p>\n
Magistrate Minnie stated that “in the course of the court’s judgments on the merits reference has been made to the fact that the accused had groomed the victim.<\/p>\n
A process by which a person prepares a child, significant adults and the environment for the abuse of the child. Specific goals include gaining access to the child, gaining the child’s compliance and maintaining the child’s secrecy to avoid disclosure.<\/p>\n
This process serves to strengthen the offender’s abusive pattern, as it may be used as a means of justifying or denying their actions.<\/p>\n
“Children from broken homes, single-parent families or children who have been exposed to emotional or physical neglect, are often targeted.<\/p>\n
Sex offenders are often attracted to a single mother with children and ensnare a needy or lonely parent by lavishing attention, affection and adoration on her and her offspring.<\/p>\n
These children and their parents, usually a single mother, possess certain weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which the perpetrator exploits by offering them what they require<\/p>\n
“He carefully ensures that he meets the needs of the vulnerable child as this will reduce the likelihood that the child will disclose the abuse. It also secures the probability that the child will accommodate the abuse.<\/p>\n
“When the above is considered in the context of this case, it is clear that the sexual grooming of the victim is an aggravating factor, as it implies pre-meditation.”<\/p>\n
It was evident from the child’s testimony that there are no indications that severe violence was used or that he sustained any extreme grievous bodily harm in the course of the rapes. The court held that the absence of violence or coercion was not mitigating.<\/p>\n
Magistrate Minnie concluded that “the accused does not accept responsibility for the offence he has committed and there is no indication of a trace of remorse for what he has done.”<\/p>\n
\u2022 The boy’s younger brother also recently disclosed that he, too, was sexually abused by the same accused. The case is still under investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A priest of the Jericho Apostolic Church in Mhluzi was sentenced to life in prison after he raped a boy on two occasions during August 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":22265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news-headlines"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}