Rapists warned

By JIMMY KALEBE
A JUDGE has reminded all that the maximum sentence for raping minors aged 12 and below is life imprisonment.
Justice Frazer Pipit in the National Court in Lae said those convicted of raping children aged 16 and below were liable to be jailed a maximum 25 years.
“The lower the age of the victim, the higher the sentence,” he added.
Pitpit made the remarks when jailing a 45-year-old amputee for eight years for raping an eight-year-old girl.
The court heard that Steven Bumang, from Nawaeb’s Busu in Morobe, lured the girl with a K5 note on Feb 27, promised to marry her and raped her.
The medical report tendered in court showed the girl only received abrasions.
Bumang was leaving after the rape when the girl’s mother arrived and found her daughter hiding.
The girl ran home and reported her ordeal to her uncle who then sought her father’s assistance to lodge a police report.
Pipit considered the following mitigating factors:

• THE damage caused to the girl’s private part were just abrasions;
• THAT the girl had engaged in such sexual activity in the past;
• THE crime was not violent; and
• Bumang expressed remorse, cooperated with the police, admit to the crime immediately, and that he was a disabled person who needed crutches for mobility.

Pitpit, in exercising the court’s discretion, suspended four years of the sentence on condition of Bumang’s good behaviour.
Bumang is to serve the remaining balance of four years with a day’s light labour due to his physical disability.