Karoo farmer awaits verdict in au pair rape trial - IOL

Louis Lategan in the Makhanda High Court on Monday as judgment began in his rape and trafficking trial. Inset, a Facebook picture of Lategan

Karoo farmer Louis Lategan sat hunched over, one hand covering his face, in the Makhanda High Court on Monday as he waited to hear whether he would be found guilty of trafficking and raping women he had hired to look after his children.

Judge Judith Roberson began delivering her judgment by going through the evidence concerning the charges against the livestock farmer.

The judgment, which is due to continue on Tuesday, was scheduled to begin on Friday but was postponed after the judge fell.

Lategan, 42, went on trial last year facing 22 charges, including six counts of human trafficking, eight of rape, three of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm against children under 16, three of assault and two relating to firearms and ammunition.

One of the rape charges, involving a girl under 18, was withdrawn during the trial after the State conceded her evidence was too weak to support a conviction.

This was the same charge on which Lategan was first arrested and released on bail, before six other women came forward and he was arrested again in 2023.

He pleaded not guilty to every charge and told the court the sex had been consensual in each case.

Taking the stand in his own defence in November last year, Lategan said the women had been willing and that some of them had even slept with him on the night they arrived on the farm.

"They jumped into bed with me," he said.

His three-man legal team argued that his ex-wife had built the case against him, putting it to the investigating team that she had set up a WhatsApp group with some of the complainants and had contacted police on their behalf.

Defence lawyer Danie Gouws read messages into the record in which the ex-wife told one of the women they "will win the case".

State advocate Nickie Turner disputed that the messages were relevant.

Some of the items police seized from Louis Lategan's car and his farmhouse when he was arrested in July 2023, photographed as evidence and shown to the Makhanda High Court during his rape and trafficking trial.

It is the State's case that the au pair jobs were a front, and that Lategan advertised for young women to come and live on his farm so that he could drug and rape them.

He placed the advert on Facebook at the start of 2020, saying he needed someone at his farm in the Xamdeboo, formerly Aberdeen, area to look after his two children when they visited, and later put the same request through employment agencies.

"His true, real intention, however, was to acquire the presence of young women on the farm in order to exploit them sexually," the indictment reads.

All six women had finished school but could not find work, and each left her home town, hundreds of kilometres away, to live alone with Lategan on his remote farm.

"They were either socially and/or economically deprived and desperate to earn an income," the indictment reads.

Turner told the court that all six women had taken the job believing they would be caring for two children and nothing more.

The State alleges that once they arrived at the farm, Lategan gave them drinks containing a drug that left them unable to remember what had happened.

He allegedly later told them they had initiated the sexual encounters themselves.

When Lategan was arrested, police seized five sex toys, six tubes of lubricant, sealed condoms, knuckle dusters, a foot massage machine and a spray marketed as an aid to seduce women, the State told the court.

The items were found in his car and in his house on the farm and were photographed as evidence.

The first woman got the job after her father saw the Facebook advert and sent it to her.

Lategan fetched her from Bloemfontein in March 2020 and said he would pay her between R5,000 and R6,000 a month.

Three weeks after she arrived, Lategan gave her a drink that made her feel ill and drowsy, the State said. She went to sleep fully clothed in her bedroom and woke up naked in his bed.

In May 2020, he dropped her off with a couple in Robert Sobukwe Town, formerly Graaff-Reinet.

She returned home after the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions were lifted.

Turner said she later discovered she was pregnant and gave birth to what she claimed was Lategan’s child on January 31, 2021, despite having no memory of ever having sex with him.

The second woman, Turner said, was living in eMalahleni, formerly Witbank, and looking for work when Lategan messaged her on Facebook in May 2020 and paid her travel money.

She arrived at the farm with a friend and Lategan told the friend to leave.

He gave her a drink that made her pass out and she woke up naked in his bed, the State alleges, and when she slept in her own room the following night he fetched her and carried her to his.

She stayed on the farm until Lategan told her to leave in August 2022.

The third woman was collected from Standerton in November 2021 by a man Lategan sent, on the same salary he had offered the first.

According to the indictment, she and the eMalahleni woman were on the farm with Lategan on New Year’s Eve.

They drank shooters and woke the next morning naked in his bed, with Lategan between them and a vibrator lying between them. Neither woman had any memory of what had happened.

She left the farm in January 2022 with the other woman's help and went to live with her family in eMalahleni.

Lategan drove to Gauteng looking for her and could not find her.

She took her own life in February 2022.

The last woman answered an advert on an au pair agency website in September 2022 for a family in Robert Sobukwe Town looking for help.

Lategan offered her R30,000 a month and sent her the money for a bus ticket from Amanzimtoti.

When she got to the farm, she found another woman's clothes and underwear still hanging in a wardrobe.

He took her to a pub with his friends in October 2022 to mark her birthday and gave her a drink that left her drowsy and nauseous, the State says, and she slept from that night until the following afternoon.

She later suffered a miscarriage, and Lategan allegedly told her to claim that his arrest had caused it so he could use the miscarriage to strengthen his bid for bail.

She and Lategan travelled to George for a medical procedure and stayed at a guesthouse with his mother, where he had sex with her that night despite her refusing and she bled heavily, the State said.

The woman went home to Gauteng, then returned in May 2023, intending to tell somebody what had happened to her.

Lategan fetched her from Xamdeboo and took her to the farm, where she lay down in her clothes feeling weak, and he undressed and raped her before she passed out, the indictment alleges.

She packed up and left the next day, was medically examined and found to have four raised wounds on her lower back, and Lategan phoned her repeatedly and threatened to kill her, the State says.

The assault charges all involved children aged between eight and 13.

Lategan called a girl into a store just before Christmas 2022, told her to bend over and struck her on the buttocks with a broomstick because she had been riding a quad bike, the indictment alleged.

The State says he hit two more children on the buttocks with a sjambok for cutting up tyre inner tubes to make catapults, telling them the tubes were still in use.

He is accused of grabbing a boy who was standing on the farm one evening, pushing him to the ground, putting his foot on the boy's chest and pushing soil into his mouth.

On another occasion he pushed a boy's head into a water trough, accusing him of cutting the head off a tortoise, the State says.

Lategan handed himself over to police in Xamdeboo with his attorney on July 3, 2023, and has been in custody since.

He was refused bail in September 2023 and again in August 2024, and lost an appeal against the refusal in the Makhanda High Court in November 2024.

He has previous convictions for hunting without a permit in 2003, reckless driving in 2004 and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm in 2006, and was given a wholly suspended sentence for kidnapping and sexual assault in Oudtshoorn in September 2022.

He was also the fifth man arrested over an alleged right-wing plot to kill former president Jacob Zuma and senior ANC leaders at the party's Mangaung conference in 2012, and treason and terrorism charges against him were withdrawn in February 2013 without the State giving reasons.

If Roberson convicts him on the trafficking and rape charges, he faces life imprisonment as the prescribed minimum sentence.

The State is seeking this sentence on the basis that the women were trafficked and raped more than once.

It is also asking for Lategan’s name to be placed on the National Register for Sex Offenders.