ONE of the six women allegedly raped by RMG Independent End Time Message Church founder Robert Martin Gumbura (57) yesterday recounted how group sex orgies were performed at the pastor’s residence and how Gumbura thwarted her efforts to escape the sexual abuse.
PHILLIP CHIDAVAENZI,SENIOR REPORTER
Speaking on the second day of her cross examination before Harare regional magistrate Hosea Mujaya, the woman said the sex orgies often involved married women from the church, including her own husband’s first wife.
She said one would lick Gumbura’s toes, another would kiss him while he would be having sexual intercourse with the third woman at the same time. Asked by Gumbura’s lawyer Rekai Maphosa why the three women did not overpower Gumbura and escape, she said it was impossible because the other women consented to the sex orgy.
Maphosa insisted the complainant was in a love relationship with the accused and that was why she kept going back to Gumbura’s Greendale home at the time she alleged the rape was taking place between 2005 and 2006. She also questioned why the complainant never told her friends about the abuse.
She said the complainant, a holder of a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English, was educated enough to know that the alleged abuse was wrong.
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The complainant, however, said she had seen people more educated than her in the church succumbing to Gumbura’s sexual whims so she had no choice, but to submit.
The defence lawyer dismissed the complainant’s assertion that she had been indoctrinated to keep whatever happened within the church as “mere fallacy”. She said the complainant’s evidence that she removed a blood-stained pad to prove she was menstruating after Gumbura had accused her of being pregnant was only possible because she had an intimate relationship with him.
The complainant, however, insisted that Gumbura encouraged members to be open with him because he was their “burden bearer”.
The complainant’s 49–year–old guardian, who was a member of Gumbura’s church between 1979 and 2006, also told the court that she left after she was rebuked during a church service for violating the church’s regulations after “counselling” some female church members on various problems they were having.
She said she was offended when Gumbura accused her of witchcraft following the death of a church member’s child. The witness also accused Gumbura of making sexual advances towards her which she turned down because she was already married.
The trial continues today.