Priest Jailed over Maid Sex Attacks

New Zimbabwe
April 30, 2012

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-7846-Priest+jailed+over+maid+sex+attacks/news.aspx

Trial ... The Bulawayo Magistrates' Court

A PRIEST who “put the fear of God” into his maid before raping her several times over a two-year period has been jailed for 15 years.

Ruthless Edias Ncube, 35, threatened the 21-year-old woman with death if she reported the abuse to anyone as he carried out the sex attacks between October 2008 and July 2010, a Bulawayo magistrate heard.

Ncube, a graduate pastor of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, attacked the woman while his wife – a lecturer at Solusi University – was at work or attending workshops, said Goodluck Katenaire, prosecuting.

Originally from Msilahobe in Lower Gweru, Ncube’s crimes went undetected until he made the maid pregnant.

In his final act of callousness, he took the woman to a police station to report that she had been raped by a STRANGER – fearing his wife would soon discover his evil secret.

But his victim gathered courage after being left alone with police officers as she told how she had been repeatedly raped by her employer.

Ncube, who maintained that the sex was consensual, had taken advantage of his young victim’s desperation for employment and used physical threats to control his victim, Katenaire told the court.

“You put the fear of God into her. All she wanted was honest work, but you turned her into a sex slave for your personal gratification,” the prosecutor told Ncube.

Magistrate Godwin Sengweni said evidence against Ncube was “overwhelming” as he sent him away for 15 years.