'I'm not the one who raped the children’
|Published
Peter Dashboy Khosa is facing 152 charges that include rape, kidnapping and assault. Picture: Motshwari Mofokeng Peter Dashboy Khosa is facing 152 charges that include rape, kidnapping and assault. Picture: Motshwari Mofokeng
Johannesburg - The clanking of his metal chains rattled through the courtroom as alleged serial rapist Peter Dashboy Khosa left the witness box and shuffled to his seat.
Khosa has been shackled around his ankles since the beginning of the trial a few months ago. Wearing an oversized black jacket and baggy blue jeans, Khosa lifted his head as he walked and made eye contact with some people in the courtroom.
He held the stare for a while and then looked down as he slid into the dock at the high court sitting in Palm Ridge.
Khosa, of Tembisa, faces 152 charges that include rape, kidnapping and assault.
He allegedly went on a five-year spree in which he raped 29 children after luring them into the veld.
The children told the court that Khosa was the man who attacked them, and his DNA was also found on some of them.
On Tuesday, however, Khosa painted himself as an innocent and honest man who was being falsely accused by his accusers and the police.
Sitting in the witness box where he was fielding questions from the prosecutor, advocate Nerissa Muller, Khosa said he did not even know his accusers.
This was in spite of the fact that some of his accusers testified in court that they knew him. They said he used to chat and play with them and they affectionately called him malome (uncle).
However, Khosa insisted he never raped anyone or committed any of the offences he was accused of.
“I don’t know those children and my name is not malome, it is Peter Khosa. I’m testifying about the truth and nothing but the truth. I’m not the one who raped, kidnapped or assaulted the children,” he said.
When Muller told Khosa his DNA was found on the rape victims, which meant he had raped them, he said: “I totally disagree. The person who performed the test is a police officer and I was arrested by a police officer, so it’s two against one.
“I am an honest man being accused of something that I did not do.”
Khosa also said the description the children gave of their attacker did not fit him.
“I am not the person they were describing. They said that person is dark and his head shakes like a peacock’s. That description does not fit me.”
Muller also told Khosa that child rapes followed him wherever he went. When he lived in Soweto, those kinds of cases were reported. When he was in Tembisa, the same thing happened, and so forth, but they stopped after his arrest.
However, Khosa wasn't having any of that.
“How can you say the rapes stopped after I was incarcerated, while some of the people I’m in the cells with are in for rapes committed between 2013 and 2014?” he asked.
The matter will be back in court on January 18.
* For the next 16 days, all South Africans are urged to be active participants in the fight to eradicate violence against women and children. The #16DaysofActivism for No Violence Against Women and Children campaign begins on Wednesday under the theme, Count me in.
The Star
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