Roland Routh
WINDHOEK – One of the alleged victims of the former cleaner and acting hostel father at Karundu Primary School in Otjiwarongo on Wednesday, before Judge Alfred Siboleka in the Windhoek High Court, recollected the two occasions he was sexually molested by the man he “trusted and looked up to”.
The youngster, who may not be identified as he is a victim of rape, told the court he was 14 years old when Merven Nguyapeua, 48, at the time the acting hostel father at the school, called him to his room and molested him the first time.
According to the teen, when he entered the room of Nguyapeua the latter started to “lick my ears and touched my private parts and asked me to have sex with him through his buttocks (sic)”.
The boy gave his testimony while being supported in the witness box by his mother. He further said that after he could not manage to satisfy Nguyapeua, the hostel father turned around saying he would instead show the boy how to do it.
That was when Nguyapeua sodomised him for the first time, the boy said in Oshiwambo language, in a soft voice and with his head bowed down. The second time occurred about three weeks later when he went to the kitchen at the hostel during study time to drink some water and found Nguyapeua there cutting cabbage for their evening meal.
According to the boy, Nguyapeua called him and told him to go into a room where the bread was stored. “He told me that if I have sex with him through his buttocks he will give me bread,” the youngster told the court.
He further narrated that Nguyapeua then started licking his ears and fondled his genitals, before pulling down his trousers to his knees and also pulled down his own pants and underpants to his knees, and instructed the boy to sodomise him whereafter he took his turn with the boy.
The boy is the third of the alleged victims of Nguyapeua that testified.
Nguyapeua denied all the allegations and said he never touched any of the boys in question.
He is facing 32 counts of rape, or 27 alternative counts of having sexual intercourse with a child below the age of 16 years.
According to the State, he forced at least 10 boys between the ages of 13 and 15 years to sodomise him after he stimulated their private parts.
The first incident allegedly occurred in 2013 and it continued until February 2016 when he was arrested.
According to the charge sheet he sexually assaulted the first boy who was 14 years old, on six occasions during 2013 and 2014, thereafter a 13-year-old boy once, another 14-year-old once, and then a 15-year-old on three different occasions.
It is further alleged that he raped a 14-year-old boy during January of 2015 on two occasions and again during the second term.
He is further accused of raping another 14-year-old during the second term of January 2015 on two occasions as well as another boy aged 14 on three occasions during 2015.
During September of 2015 he allegedly sexually assaulted another 14-year-old on three occasions before he committed another six sexual assaults on a 13-year-old boy before he was arrested on March 1, 2016 and also raped the same boy in May 2015, the charge sheet states.
Milton Engelbrecht from Engelbrecht Attorneys appears for Nguyapeua, on legal aid instructions, and the prosecution is represented by Deputy Prosecutor General Seredine Jacobs.
The case continues today and Nguyapeua remains in custody at the Windhoek Correctional Facility’s section for trial-awaiting prisoners.