Fallen tennis star, Bob Hewitt, reported to authorities at St Albans prison in Port Elizabeth Tuesday morning to begin serving a six-year jail term for the rape and sexual assault of three former tennis students in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
His incarceration comes just over a week after the Constitutional Court turned down the 76-year-old's application for leave to appeal his jail sentence.
Hewitt was convicted last year after a five-year saga which began with former students, Twiggy Tolken and Sue Ellen Sheehan, laying charges against him.
A third woman, who did not want to be identified, joined suit.
Their court battle was supported by the advocacy group, Women and Men Against Child Abuse, WMACA, who's director, Miranda Friedmann, travelled to Port Elizabeth, to be at St Albans prison.
"Today is the end of a very long journey and it really is a victory. A victory for adult survivors of child sexual abuse and child rape. And, it makes us an an organisation really feel that this journey of five years from when we were first approached by one of the victims to say I have put a charge forward, I have actually got a case at the NPA but it is lying on someone's desk and nothing has happened."
"We eventually decided to do a press conference and call the public and let people know that the NPA's sitting with a high profile case, a case of someone who coached many, many children and we're looking at a very serious crime of child rape. Obviously it was then joined by other victims, two came forward. But, at the time she was really the standing alone Sue Ellen and it was really up to us organisations to step forward," said Friedmann.
She said it was one of thes cases that once you started you cannot go back on. "We knew right there that was going to be a long journey. Somebody as famous and high profile was not going to take this literally lying down, they were going to stand up and fight this so we knew that," Friedmann said.
The WMACA director said after many battles the court case was eventually held at Palmridge Court where he had to appear and the matter was moved to the High Court in Pretoria.
"After the High Court in Pretoria, as you know, we had an excellent judgement there by Judge Bam, a very solid judgement," she said.
Friedmann said Judge Bam based Hewitt's six-year sentence "on his age, on his ill-health but also taking into account that the victims had suffered all those years. We know something incredible with child sexual abuse and that is that it takes away a child's childhood but what it also does is that it takes away a child's adulthood. It takes away the potential of who they were going to be, because who they are after a sexual assault is a different person," Friedmann added.
The Department of Correctional Service said Hewitt will be held in a medium security section of the prison. Provincial spokesperson, Zama Feni, said Hewitt would have some privileges there like two visits a month. He said Hewitt would also undergo a health and security risk assesment as part of the process.
One of Hewitt's victims, Twiggy Token, said Tuesday that "this is a good lesson for people out there that you will eventually have to pay for what you've done. I know that there's been a few comments that people have said that he's so old, yes maybe he is old and going to be maybe serving six years in prison, but don't forget the fact that when this happened to me I was 12 and I've lived with this for the last 35 years and it's something I will never forget."
"So, my sentence with having to live with this is a lot longer than his," Tolken said.
