A Cape Town hairdresser wept as she told the Wynberg magistrate's court on Tuesday that she had been raped repeatedly in a drug-fuelled assault by two men.
Shiraaz Moosa, 37, Adrian Matthyse, 33, and Saide Sadan, 40, have pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, eight counts of indecent assault, five of rape and one of assault.
The married hairdresser told the court she had been driven to a house in Marina da Gama on August 16 last year under the pretext of doing some hairdressing work.
She testified that Moosa raped her while Sadan touched her. Moosa and Sadan smoked Mandrax and dagga before Moosa raped her again.
The woman said the men took her in a car to buy more drugs, including "rocks", a cocaine derivative. She said she could not escape because Moosa held her hands.
They drove back to Marina da Gama. "I begged them please to let me go. They wouldn't and put me back in the room."
After he took the drugs, the woman testified, Moosa raped her again. She acknowledged having met him briefly last year, when he and Sadan had popped in to see her.
Sadan and Moosa had made her smoke the Mandrax pipe on the day of the alleged crime, causing her to faint, she said.
The hairdresser said Matthyse joined them around 10pm. Matthyse raped her before he and Moosa sodomised her, she said. Photographs of her were also taken.
Moosa's counsel, Herbert Raubenheimer, wanted to know why the woman had taken seven days to inform her husband about her "terrible" night, not confiding in him or his sister, although she regarded them as confidants.
"Please don't take chances. Don't mess up lives where it's not necessary," he told her.
He submitted that she and Moosa had had sexual intercourse before August 16.
He suggested the complainant's version of events was "improbable" and that there was no key to the room door she said was locked, while the photos were hardly what one would expect at a rape scene.
He also wanted to know why the woman, who phoned her husband on the night of the alleged sexual assault, had not told him she had been abducted.
Earlier, reading into the record Moosa's plea explanation, Raubenheimer said what had taken place was not unlawful.
"What took place in the privacy of a house was with the consent of the complainant," he said, adding that his client had denied intending to commit any of the charges. The complainant was "a willing and eager participant" and had lied to her husband about her whereabouts.
Instructing attorney Reuben Liddell, for Matthyse and Sadan, described the night as an "orgy of note".
An application by the state for the trial to be held in camera was rejected by magistrate Bruce Langa.