The paediatrician giving evidence in the abuse and murder trial of a five-year-old girl told the Western Cape High Court last week that he had rejected almost all of the explanations for the wounds on her body attributed to her allegedly falling down a flight of stairs, saying the more stories he heard, “the less I believe”.
Rhodiesha Kampher and her partner Sostenes Peter Manyama are on trial for the abuse and murder of the the little girl, Linathi Solontyi, reports News24.
Manyama, who denies all charges, is also charged with rape. Kampher pleaded guilty to child abuse and neglect but not guilty to murder.
Dr Arthur Dunkley examined the toddler while she was in a coma and under intensive care in the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town, attached to a catheter, a heart monitor and a brain fluid shunt. He had testified that most of her injuries were about two-months-old, and “incompatible” with a fall down any steps on the day she was admitted.
Linathi was almost five when she started living with the couple from 30 July 2019 to 21 September 2019, the day they took her to the hospital after the fall they say she had.
The court heard that she had lesions, scratches, cuts, dark marks, scabs in different stages of healing, a fractured clavicle, four broken vertebrae, boils in her ear, blisters that could have been herpes, a wound where a nappy cut into her tummy, lesions to her genitals, and marks on her thigh, chest and buttocks.
She ultimately died from a traumatic injury to her brain after a skull fracture. Kampher explained in her plea that the girl fell down the steps on her way to the toilet. She was also looking after her then four-month-old baby.
She also said she watched Manyama allegedly assault and rape Linathi, and did not say anything to anyone because she was afraid of his violent flare ups, but she now realised she “should have told somebody about it”.
She accepted that she could go to jail for 10 years for child abuse and “deliberate neglect”.
Manyama’s counsel, Kenneth Roberts, told Dunkley that his client said the little girl was covered in injuries and malnourished when she arrived from her granny and mum.
“The child told him the grandmother beat her with a plastic hairbrush and a shoe,” said Roberts. He said Manyama discovered her injuries while she was being bathed.
“The child was very dirty when she came from her grandmother.”
According to Manyama, the child would sleep-walk, wet and soil herself, and was very nervous. He said a social worker and the child's grandmother knew all this. In the court record is a handwritten letter on a scrap of paper torn out of a journal that the girl’s granny wrote to the social worker.
In the letter, Linathi’s granny Ncediswa Solontyi said her daughter kept changing her mind about whether Manyama was Linathi’s biological father. Ultimately, one day she got home from work and discovered that “the child is gone” and that Manyama had her.
In her plea explanation, Kampher said she understood Linathi was Manyama’s child from a previous relationship.
They looked after her for a week when her granny went to the Eastern Cape, and one day Linathi’s mother Yandiswa arrived and asked them to take her.
She said she was unemployed. She gave them the child’s birth certificate, and they gave her money and food and never saw her again.
Linathi’s mother could not be traced.
Kampher's counsel Susanna Kuun pointed out that Dunkley appeared to have missed four fractures in different places while he was examining her while still alive and that a CT scan had not been done on her body. The fractures were detected during her autopsy.
Dunkley acknowledged that he may have missed this and explained that when children were in intensive care, as Linathi was, it was difficult to remove all of their life-saving equipment to do a full CT scan.
But they did find a fracture in her skull.
"The fracture could have been if she fell down steps and hit her head,” said Kuun, pointing out that nobody saw her fall.
“I've already said it is possible to fracture a skull by falling down steps. However, I looked for supporting evidence for that to be the scenario and I’m not finding it,’ replied Dunkley.
The trial continues this week.
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