Dad beats mom into a coma, but child continues to live with him (Randberg, South Africa)

Dad ALEX MOKGORO is a successful IT professional; no wonder he doesn't think of himself as a "real" criminal, even though he beat his wife into a permanent vegetative state. He's getting the kid glove treatment, too. Not only is he being held under house arrest instead of in jail, one of his kids is still living with him! What the hell is that about?

http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article165079.ece

Wife-beater: I'm no criminal
Oct 24, 2009 10:35 PM By KIM HAWKEY

IT whiz kid Alex Mokgoro was all smiles at his latest court appearance, despite the threat of a lengthy jail sentence hanging over his head for beating his wife into a coma.

"It's not nice in jail ... I would like house arrest. I'm not a criminal," Mokgoro said at the Randburg Magistrate's Court on Friday.

A year ago, he was acquitted of attempted murder and instead was found guilty of assaulting his wife, Bridgitte Mashope, in 2004. He had locked the door of their bedroom and attacked the mother of two, now 37, eventually leaving her in a vegetative state at a hospice in Kimberley in the Northern Cape.

She remains unaware of the death of their four-year-old son, Lebohang, who succumbed to a heart condition shortly after the attack.

Although 47-year-old Mokgoro hopes to walk away with a sentence of house arrest, Mashope's parents, Godfrey and Gwen, pleaded with the court on Friday to mete out the maximum sentence of imprisonment.

They believe that the "arrogant" man who left their eldest daughter, who they affectionately call Bibi, in a permanent vegetative state deserves nothing less.

"Otherwise, he will walk out of this honourable court fully convinced that he did nothing wrong," Godfrey Mashope warned.

Social worker Annette Vergeer told the court that because Mokgoro was a first-time offender and did not present a danger to society, he should be handed a suspended sentence - with house arrest and community service, and maybe a fine - rather than jail time.

Vergeer said Mokgoro's family would also suffer without his salary.

His parents and his unemployed sister were entirely dependent on him, while one of his three children - aged 18, two and seven months - was living with him in his Centurion home, and he financially maintained the other two, who live with their respective mothers.

Vergeer said Mokgoro's family was used to a "middle- to upper-class lifestyle", which Mokgoro, a project and programme manager for Absa Bank, paid for with his R80000 salary.

Magistrate George Andrews asked Vergeer how house arrest would be different to how most people lived their lives. "We all go to work and then go home, where we read or watch TV and it's the same the next day."

When court resumes on December 9, another expert witness will testify in aggravation of sentence before Andrews makes his ruling.