Cape Town - The sordid allegations of child rape that Moyhdian Pangkaeker is accused of were met with disgust in the Western Cape High Court as the alleged killer of 8-year-old Tazne van Wyk testified under cross-examination.
Pangkaeker has been charged with rape, murder, kidnap and mutilating a corpse after he was caught on camera with the little girl at a petrol station in Worcester on the day she went missing, February 7, 2020.
Her remains were found almost two weeks later in a storm water drain along the N1. He faces further charges for sustained abuse against a single complainant who said she decided to report him after she saw the news about Tazne’s disappearance and his involvement.
The witness, who testified in-camera because she was a minor at the time of the alleged offences, said she was raped and molested by Pangkaeker on several occasions over the course of three years, from 2016 to 2019, but he denied that he raped her after he agreed with advocate Lenro Badenhorst that she was an “honest” witness.
When asked why she would persist in saying that he had raped her, he said: “I don’t know what the reason is, but she has an agenda.”
He further claimed that the witness would constantly tell lies as a child, and said that she was very clever.
Badenhorst asked him: “Would you agree if I say that she was quite industrious to keep on insisting on a case against you with several rape charges?”
He replied: “That is correct, everywhere she went, she would tell stories.”
Pangkaeker, 57, was visibly agitated throughout the cross-examination and would constantly raise and lower his voice while he was being questioned.
Stuttering through his testimony, he told Badenhorst to “please stop putting words in my mouth” after Badenhorst put it to him that “it’s easy for you to tell lies” and “you are making up this story as you go”.
He claimed that another complainant – who testified that she was violently raped in a bush – told lies in court and that she was the one who had forced him to have sex.
“The way she fell on top of me and the way she held on to me, I could see what her whole intention was,” Pangkaeker said.