Former education employee accused of raping child laughs as witnesses testify in court

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A former Eastern Cape department of education subject adviser accused of the rape of a minor in a case that made national headlines and led President Cyril Ramaphosa to visit the village of the victim, this week pleaded not guilty to rape.  

The trial of Louis Pepping started in the Mthatha high court on Tuesday, the matter having to be moved from Lusikisiki because of fears the angry residents would swamp the courthouse.

Pepping laughed throughout most of the proceedings. 

He is facing a charge of rape for allegedly sexually assaulting the young girl after he lured her to his home with the promise of cooking her a meal. Both are from Ngobozana village in Lusikisiki. The rape is alleged to have taken place in 2019.

According to testimony, the child’s family discovered evidence of the rape because of the little girl’s bleeding and ripped genitalia.

“My grandchild was oozing blood and her vagina was torn, exposing the inner layers. We had to wrap a blanket around her waist as she continued bleeding,” the child’s great-grandmother told the court. 

The woman and other witnesses cannot be named to protect the identity of the child.

The great-grandmother told the court that she had asked the girl if she knew who had assaulted her and where the person lived, with the child answering yes to both questions.

The great-grandmother told Judge Mvuzo Notyesi that she distinctly remembered the day of the alleged sexual assault because it was a church day. When she arrived home, the girl was not home, having gone to a tuckshop to buy chips.

“I then requested one of the other children to go and look for her, which they did. They found her slowly walking back to our house.”

The woman said that when she noticed the child’s laboured walking, she examined her vagina, where she noticed the blood and tearing.

She then called the child’s aunt.

The aunt told the court that she hired a metered taxi to take the child to hospital. “I could not wait for the police as I was afraid of the bleeding that the rape survivor encountered.”

The aunt said after they arrived at the hospital, they were taken to the Thuthuzela Care Centre. Here, the girl was attended to by a doctor who gave her medication and then told them to go home and return the next day.

The next day they took the girl to the St Elizabeth Hospital where she was transferred to Mthatha General Hospital. The child was again examined and a rape case was open with police.

A neighbour told the court that she and other residents had confronted Pepping after the alleged incident, demanding a confession.

“We ambushed him in his homestead. On arrival we found him locking the door and forcibly took his keys as he did not want to [let us in].

“We opened his house and, enraged, we began hitting him with a mop stick and broom which broke,” she said.

A video posted on Twitter in September 2019 shows Pepping, dressed only in boxer shorts and bleeding from a head wound, being interrogated by a group of men. Pepping, looking drained, tells his alleged assaulters to “go to court”.

The department’s spokesperson, Malibongwe Mtima, saidthat according to records, there were no prior cases or complaints lodged against Pepping. He was fired shortly after the alleged rape of the girl took place.

“Although the allegations against him occurred outside of the work environment, the department dismissed Mr Pepping on 29/04/2021 through a disciplinary inquiry arbitration by the Education Labour Relations Council [ELRC],” Mtima said.

The ELRC is a bargaining council that serves the public education sector. Its primary business is to promote the maintenance of labour peace in the public education sector by preventing and resolving disputes.

President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the child’s family in September 2019. He said that gender-based violence and the murder of women had “exploded in this province”.

A week before Ramaphosa’s visit, hundreds of residents took to the streets to march against Pepping’s bail hearing, saying he did not deserve one. 

Bail was denied.

The case continues.