A 41-year-old man who allegedly raped a domestic worker several times and forced her to perform sexual acts with his dogs is mentally unstable, his father contends.
Testifying in the Bronkhorstspruit Magistrate's Court on Monday, in a bid to have the accused referred for mental observation, the man told the court that his son had always been mentally unstable. "One moment he would be fine; the next he would be angry, swearing, shouting, fighting and breaking things," his father said.
He told the court that, when his son was nearly 8 years old, a school psychologist had told him that his son's brain development was that of a 3-year-old child.
Following this information, the accused was placed in a special needs school, where he started displaying abnormal outbursts of anger.
They then took the accused to see another psychologist, who told the family that the accused's brain had never fully developed and, as a result, he would never be able to handle stress.
"We realised that, with all the employments and work that he did," his father said.
"In mid-1993, he got so bad... he got angrier and more violent that we took him to the district surgeon in Potchefstroom to have him observed because of his unacceptable behaviour.
"They sent him to Sterkfontein psychiatric hospital in Krugersdorp. He was there for two weeks, where they diagnosed him as mentally retarded."
He also testified that in 1999, the accused had set himself alight and had sustained burn wounds over 33% of his body.
"It was on the stomach, the legs and the hands, as he used his hands to try and extinguish the fire."
The accused’s father also told the court that his son had been on and off medication over the years and that his outbursts and abnormal behaviour had been constant, and that they had just accepted it.
