A serial rapist found guilty of brutally raping six women was sentenced to 160 years´ imprisonment in the Waterval Magistrate´s Court last Wednesday. His sentence includes six life terms.

The 25-year-old Leonard Ngobeni’s sentence came as a small victory for his victims – especially in the month when the country is celebrating its women.

As sentence was handed down, the jam-packed court room spontaneously burst out in applause. Among the members of the public who attended were his victims. Afterwards, all the women gathered outside the court house and sang songs of praise to express their gratitude for the judicial officers who prosecuted the case.

Ngobeni was caught late last year after the Makhado police were notified that a possible serial rapist might be operating near the Olifantshoek area. The local Child Protection Unit set up a task force and, shortly afterwards, Ngobeni was arrested, following a tip-off from the community. When his house was searched, police found 26 stolen cellphones. One of these cellphones belonged to Ngobeni´s last victim, a 73-year-old gogo who was so severely beaten by him that she never regained consciousness and died.

Ngobeni’s other victims were able to identify him in an identity parade. In some of the cases, where police were able to link Ngobeni by means of his DNA, the victims were spared the trauma of a parade.

Ngobeni was charged with six counts of rape, one count of attempted rape and seven counts of robbery with aggravating circumstances. He would target women when they were gathering wood in the bush, first beating them up and then raping them. Most of his victims were in their fifties or sixties.

After the rape, Ngobeni would usually steal whatever money his victims had and, in some cases, also their cellphones. He would then use a knife to threaten them to keep quiet. Three of his victims reported to the police that he not only threatened them, but just stabbed them.

In the case of attempted rape, Ngobeni tried to rape a 36-year-old woman - his youngest victim. The woman later told police that she managed to escape when she told Ngobeni that she had just had an abortion. She knew that she was in trouble, she told the police, when Ngobeni asked her whether she had ever met a serial rapist and that he was one.

Further investigations by the police revealed that Ngobeni was out on parole for a previous 10-year jail sentence - also for rape. He was released in September 2009 and raped his first victim in December 2009.

Ngobeni agreed to plead guilty if some of the charges against him were dropped. The State agreed and dropped all the charges of robbery against him. In asking for leniency, Ngobeni told the court that he raped his victims because he was looking for food. He then turned to the gallery and apologized to his victims. He was, however, unable to identify his victims when asked to do so by the state prosecutor.

Ngobeni was sentenced to 10 years´ imprisonment on the count of attempted rape and life imprisonment on each of the six rape charges, not to run concurrently, meaning that he effectively received 160 years of jail time.