Action Society welcomes the sentencing of a pastor for molesting a six-year-old girl in Atlantis in the Western Cape.
Aubrey Jooste was sentenced to imprisonment in the Atlantis Magistrate’s Court this week. Jooste initially faced a charge of rape and indecent assault; however, he was acquitted of the rape charge.
According to the Cape Argus, at the time of the assault, Jooste lived two doors away from his victim and was friends with her parents. The report states that he would put on porn movies, touch her, lick her private parts, and expect her also to lick his private parts. The victim, who is now an adult, says the pastor did this every chance he got until she was 13 years old.
“We are disgusted by the man’s actions which left his victim with permanent emotional scars,” said Action Society’s Kaylynn Palm. “We welcome the sentence and the work the National Prosecuting Authority put in. We are satisfied even though the sentence could have been harsher. Dangerous people like this ‘pastor’ should not be allowed to be in contact with any child or woman in society.
“We are calling on the government to take crimes against women and children seriously. We look at the latest crime statistics, where we see 120 cases of rape reported – five per hour. It is evident that there’s a huge problem regarding gender-based violence in South Africa,” she said.
