It has been a dramatic about-turn of justice for former Worcester school teacher Jeremy Claassen — convicted last year of raping a 13-year-old pupil and sentenced to life imprisonment. His conviction has been overturned and his immediate release ordered by the Cape High Court.
Claassen, once a Life Orientation teacher at a school in Worcester, was convicted in May last year of raping a grade 8 girl in February 2020.
This week, ruling on Claassen’s appeal against his conviction and sentence, the court found that “the state failed to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt” during the trial and that material misdirections had infected the trial court’s judgment.
Central to the high court’s reasoning was a meticulous re-evaluation of the evidence.
Where there is reasonable doubt at the end of a trial, the accused must be given the benefit of such doubt.
— Judge Gayaat Da Silva-Salie
Judge Gayaat Da Silva-Salie noted that the trial court had given undue weight to the complainant’s demeanour and emotional state, which “is a fallible indicator of truthfulness” and cannot, without more, justify a conviction where contradictions were present.
The court found that the trial judge had improperly conflated the J88 medical report with proof of rape on the date alleged. As her judgment explained, the report’s notation that the girl’s hymen was “not intact” was “neutral and not probative of rape on the date alleged” and did not establish the when, how or by whom any sexual contact occurred.
The pivotal factual element in Claassen’s appeal was his alibi. He told the trial court that on the date of the alleged offence he had taken time off from school to attend Worcester court to pay a traffic fine that was due that day.
While the Worcester court had dismissed the evidence, saying that the fine could have been paid by someone else, the high court accepted that documentation reflected the fine had been paid at 11.55am on February 7 2020 and that, when assessed in context, this established a reasonable possibility that Claassen was not at the school during the second break when the girl claimed she was raped.
Da Silva-Salie held that the trial court erred in rejecting the alibi on speculative grounds, observing that the trial judge’s conjecture “amounts to impermissible inference” and that “where there is reasonable doubt at the end of a trial, the accused must be given the benefit of such doubt.”
The high court also criticised the trial court’s decision to call the school principal — not as a witness for either side — but under Section 186 of the Criminal Procedure Act, after both the state and defence had closed their cases.
The judgment found that the magistrate had “descended into the arena” by eliciting testimony that attempted to undermine Claassen’s alibi rather than clarify ambiguities. In doing so, the court risked supplementing the state’s case after the close of evidence, and this had been a misuse of judicial discretion.
In her concluding order, Da Silva-Salie made clear why the conviction could not stand. She said the state’s case, when properly evaluated, did not meet the standard of proof required in a criminal case, being beyond reasonable doubt.
Accordingly, the high court upheld Claassen’s appeal, set aside his conviction and life sentence, and substituted an order of acquittal. The order was backdated to May 14 2025, meaning that Claassen’s conviction is treated legally as though it had never stood.
The judge further directed that Claassen “must be released from the correctional facility where he is detained immediately and without delay”.
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