{"id":35908,"date":"2011-10-12T13:28:37","date_gmt":"2011-10-12T11:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=35908"},"modified":"2011-10-13T08:48:25","modified_gmt":"2011-10-13T06:48:25","slug":"facebook-rapist-pleads-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/35908-facebook-rapist-pleads-guilty.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook rapist pleads guilty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The man dubbed the &#8220;<a title=\"Facebook\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/348566-Facebook\">Facebook<\/a> rapist&#8221; has pleaded guilty to raping two women and robbing them of their valuables.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Bester pleaded guilty to all four charges against him in the Durban Magistrate&#8217;s Court on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n<p>He faced two counts of rape and two counts of armed robbery with aggravating circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>His lawyer Narendra Narotam read a statement to the court in which he explained how he committed the crimes.<\/p>\n<p>He admitted raping two women in Westville and Umhlanga, in Durban, in August.<\/p>\n<p>Although he raped them, his intention was only to rob them of their valuables such as cellphones, credit cards and watches.<\/p>\n<p>It emerged in court that Bester had a previous conviction for fraud. Details of the conviction were expected to be released when he appeared again in court on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Narotam suggested his client be assessed by a psychologist, saying Bester had tried to commit suicide.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He has told me many things that I cannot mention here. I believe a psychological report will be needed,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Bester told the court he understood the nature of the charges he faced.<\/p>\n<p>He was arrested last Wednesday in Alberton, south of Johannesburg.<\/p>\n<p>Bester lured women by sending them e-mails claiming international modelling scouts were interested in them. He befriended them on Facebook, then met them in person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The man dubbed the &#8220;Facebook rapist&#8221; has pleaded guilty to raping two women<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":24707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[36,161],"class_list":["post-35908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-active","tag-facebook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35910,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35908\/revisions\/35910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}