The Supreme Court of Appeal on Tuesday upheld the conviction and sentence of two men for rapes they committed 19 years before charges were laid by the woman, who was 14 years old at the time of the rape. The woman, who was raped in 1983 at a friend’s house in Parow, told only two friends about the incident.

She laid the charge against one of the men in 2002 after seeing him for the first time in 19 years. Mark Cornick and Leonard Kinnear, who were both 18 at the time of the rape, were convicted and sentenced in the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court three years ago.

The men’s appeal to a full bench in the Cape High Court against their conviction and sentences of five and four years respectively was dismissed. The Women’s Legal Centre director, Bettina Wyngaard, welcomed the ruling, saying the decision was good news for abused women who did not immediately report rapes. Appeal judge Carole Lewis said the woman’s evidence in the trial had been consistent and credible and was corroborated in various respects.

The woman also provided plausible explanations for her failure to tell her family about the rapes, and for remaining silent for so many years. “She had been brought up by elderly and conservative grandparents and they never discussed matters of an intimate nature. “She had a distant relationship with her mother who had also not spoken to her ever about sex or physiology,” Lewis said in a judgment concurred by Judge Visvanathan Ponnan and Acting Judge Leona Theron.

Lewis said the accused’s version of events was scanty and they could not explain the improbability of the woman fabricating a complex story about their raping her some 19 years previously. She said the sentences of five years for Cornick and four for Kinnear were entirely appropriate.

Ernest Mabuza, www.businessday.co.za