My wife Gayle and I were
living in Johannesburg when our daughter Belinda Abbott attended St Teresa’s
School there. It was more commonly known as Rosebank Convent and she was in her
late teens, fresh out of the convent in 1998, when we organised for her to go
to the Natal Technikon in Durban because it had such a good reputation for
teaching Clothing Design.
This was
something Belinda had always wanted to do from when she was a little girl. And in
her last school year she even designed and made her own dress for the matric
dance.
We bought a
two bedroomed flat for her not far from the Tech in Durban with the idea that
she would get a companion to share it with her.
But when she initially got there she hadn’t had time to find somebody
when it happened.
Belinda was
woken in the middle of the night by an Indian in his underpants standing next
to her bed. He told her he had come to help her. She immediately started
spraying him with the mace spray I had given her for just such an occasion. It
was a particularly large one which enabled her to keep spraying him as he ran
through the flat and out of the window he had come in through.
When I went
down to Durban to comfort her it was clear that the intruder had spent some time
in the first floor flat before he had come into Belinda’s bedroom. Like a wild
animal marking its territory he had left his calling card under quite few of
the cushions in the lounge.
At the time
Belinda had no way of knowing that she had escaped unscathed from a physical
point of view from what turned out to be possibly South Africa’s most prolific
serial rapist. But the mental scars of such a horrendous experience will be
with her for the rest of her life.
“I didn’t
sleep for two years after that,” she told me. But this did not stop her excelling
at her studies during her three year course at the Tech. Shortly after this
terrifying experience one of the local papers carried a picture of a boyish
looking Andrew Mohammed, who had escaped from the CR Swart police cells there
while waiting to appear at an identity parade. And when I showed Belinda his
picture in the paper she identified him as the man who had been in her flat.
In spite of
her terrifying experience she still completed her National Diploma in Clothing
Design cum laude top of the class of about 40 students at the Tech with 11 distinctions. She was
also a finalist in the Du Pont Fashion Awards in which there were 79 entries
from two competing Technikons. And now 30 years later she runs her own
successful fashion house Once Was that she founded in Melbourne, Australia. It
is hardly surprising that the last place that she wanted to built her career
was in South Africa where she was born.
The 30 year old Mahomed said at one stage he “just walked
out” of the Police station in Durban. The cops were clearly not paying
attention to one of their most notorious sex offenders. He was facing a variety
of sex crimes and armed robbery. Within a few days he continued to terrorise
young white women in Pretoria half the country away. He also stole cars from
some of them, which he sold through a contact.
It took the Pretoria police to do what
the ones in Durban had failed so dismally to do. In the Commercial Crimes Court
there he was sentenced to an effective 177 years in jail. This meant his
sentence was only for part of what he had done because, as he got such a huge jail
term there it was considered pointless to try him again for his similar crime
spree in the Durban area. He held up some
of his victims with a gun before raping or sexually assaulting them. The only
plus about Belinda’s experience was that when he got into her flat he had evidently
not yet been able to obtain a gun.
He was
sentenced after he pleaded guilty to 23 charges of rape, attempted rape,
indecent assault, armed robbery and the illegal possession of a fire arm. All
but two of his victims were aged between 18 and 30.
He even forced some of his victims to have oral sex with
him.
The Police
forensic psychologist Captain Lynne Evans told the court that because of the
number of cases and the physical violence involved there was a possibility he
would have ended up murdering somebody if he had not been caught.
Pleading
for a second chance Mahomed told the court, “I have a wife and child to support
and if my wife knew I was a serial rapist she would have divorced me long ago.”
If his wife hadn’t known she must have
been in another world.
Belinda had a friend move into the flat shortly after the incident so she was no longer all on her own there.
A former
Northern Transvaal gymnast was just 19 when she was severely injured when she
jumped out of a two story window after being raped by Mohamed. She subsequent
successfully claimed damages of R5 million from the State for the negligence of the Police in
letting Mohamed escape after he was first arrested in Durban.
The humpty dumpty legal system is
such that Mahomed's sentence was changed to an "indefinate term of
imprisonment" which meant he had to return to court to be
"resentenced" every 15 years. This has already been done once with
one side labeling him a"manipulative psychopath" and his defence
making the ridiculous claim that he had a "clean prison record" and
should be released. But he did not succeed in getting his freedom so both sides
will be repeating the arguments when the current 15 period comes to an end.
It's deplorable the way the State is treating Mahomed as though he was wronged when he devastated the lives of so many women.
