On what should have been just another ordinary day at home in Florida, Roodepoort, a 14-year-old girl’s life was shattered in the most unthinkable way.
It was January 2021. Her parents were away at work. The young girl, living in a residential complex, went to the new security guard—just doing what residents do. She needed access to the washing area. He was the person in uniform. The one meant to keep her safe.
Instead, Mpho Antonio Lebona, a 26-year-old man on his first day of work, turned that uniform into a disguise for violence. Inside that laundry room, with the door locked, he raped her. He didn’t just harm her body—he scarred her spirit. He left behind a bite mark on her neck, as if to brand his cruelty.
But she didn’t stay silent.
She spoke up.
And her community listened.
Thanks to her bravery and the swift action of the residents around her, Lebona was arrested that same day. He never got the chance to walk away.
In the courtroom, the emotional weight of what had been done to her was laid bare. Her mother stood by her. They shared the pain, the trauma, the heartbreak—not just of the attack, but of the innocence stolen from a girl who simply asked for help.
The magistrate, Thelma Simpson, did not hold back. She called the crime exactly what it was: heinous. For something so cruel and calculated against a child, life imprisonment was the only sentence that could even begin to reflect the depth of the harm caused.