Cyberbully guilty of child rape, murder

CYBERBULLY Itumeleng Bendow Machabe, 27, was found guilty of the rape and murder of 11-year-old Relebogile Segami, as well as enticing young girls to share naked pictures that were exchanged on WhatsApp and Facebook.

Machabe was convicted on 18 out of a total of 19 charges in the Northern Cape High Court on February 12, including raping three minors between the ages of 13-15 years old, extortion, fraud, crimen injuria and child pornography.

Relebogile had followed the accused after he promised to give her R20. She was strangled to death, and her body was discarded in the veld behind the Northern Cape Provincial Legislature in March 2022.

Machabe lured his victims through a fake Facebook account and posted explicit videos and their nude full-body pictures. He also blackmailed his victims by threatening to post their naked images on social media.

He pretended to be a 16-year-old, gay female who purported to be attending Christian Brothers College or Northern Cape Technical High School.

Machabe maintained that he had consensual sexual intercourse with his victims and claimed that someone had changed his password on Facebook.

He stated that his cellphone was damaged after it fell into the water and blamed his girlfriend for refusing to return his cellphone after discovering that he was communicating with his “other girlfriends”.

State advocate Elmari Kruger told the court on Wednesday this week that Segami’s family was left devastated and heartbroken.

“Her sister Refilwe was the last family member to see Relebogile alive. Their mother is suffering from depression and is taking medication. She indicated that she does not have the mental strength to deal with Refilwe’s angry outbursts. Her family is still struggling to deal with her death,” said Kruger.

She stated that the court had a responsibility to deal harshly with acts of gender-based violence and femicide.

“Relebogile was killed in a heinous manner, where her body was dumped in the veld. Society is outraged over what happened.”

Kruger pointed out that Machabe had inflicted deep psychological scars on traumatised teenagers, who became suicidal and depressed.

“The 13-year-old girl was familiar with the accused and was a virgin prior to being raped. The case dragged on for two years and she failed her grades. The traumatic incident stole two years of her life. She was still very emotional when she testified, even though the incident happened 11 years ago.

“They (the young victims) were embarrassed and hid themselves from the rest of the world, out of fear that people would recognise them from their naked pictures. They related that they would never have befriended the accused on Facebook had they known that he was an adult male.”

She added that Machabe threatened to expose a 15-year-old girl’s naked pictures to her friends - who had abandoned her and treated her like an outcast.

“Her identity was used to lure more victims. She cries every day and tried to take her own life by overdosing on her mother’s diabetes medication. She harmed herself by cutting herself with razor blades. She was bullied on social media and was afraid that the accused would target more girls through the use of her identity.”

Kruger said a 15-year-old complainant felt ashamed after the accused threatened to make her naked pictures “go viral” if she failed to send him a lewd video of herself inserting a pencil into her anus.

“The complainant was not able to go through with it. She felt like a failure and was worried that someone would see the video.”

Kruger stated that another complainant, who was 14 years old at the time of the incident, had also tried to commit suicide.

“She failed matric as she was not able to attend classes for three years and lost her self-confidence. She feared that people would recognise her from the naked pictures. She took Allergex pills in order to sleep at night. After she fell pregnant, she was worried that her daughter would suffer the same fate. She questions the motives of anyone who professes their love for her.”

Kruger revealed that another 15-year-old girl was “slapped into submission” by Machabe, who threatened to kill her if she told anyone that he had forced her to have oral and anal sex with him.

“She suffered painful injuries and was assaulted when she refused to co-operate when he urinated in her mouth.”

Kruger pointed out that many of the offences carried minimum sentences of life imprisonment.

Machabe’s legal representative, advocate Sakkie Nel, requested the court to consider that his client was young and was capable of being rehabilitated.

“Since 2013, there have been no convictions against him. He is a first-offender and is too young to spend his life in prison,” said Nel.

Judge Cecile Williams believed that Machabe was a “dishonest and unreliable” witness who fabricated evidence.

“There is a pattern in the manner in which he approached his young victims,” she noted.

She also pointed out that Machabe had raped and murdered Relebogile after he had been released on bail. “She knew the accused and trusted him.”

Williams noted that the post-mortem results indicated that Relebogile was a virgin before she was raped

She also indicated that the injuries suffered by the complainants were not consistent with consensual sexual intercourse.

“The family of one of the complainants decided to withdraw the charges of rape as the case was dragging on. The complainant did not wish to be subjected to the trauma of testifying. Her teachers were also complaining that she was missing classes as she had to frequently attend court,” Williams said.

Sentencing is expected to be handed down on February 18.