A 21-year-old man has been sentenced to 10 years and 9 months imprisonment for raping his cousin.

While sentencing the man, Labasa High Court Judge, Justice Daniel Goundar says that rape of a child is so repulsive that a condign punishment must be imposed to mark the community’s outrage against such crime.

Justice Goundar says that the courts will continue to take a tough stance on offenders who rape children by imposing long prison sentences to denounce the crime and to give effect to the principle of deterrence for others.

He says that there was evidence of a traditional apology made to the victim’s family in which the offender had cried, but the value of that apology diminished when the offender took the defence of alibi at the trial.

The victim was raped when she went to her farm in Vanua Levu with her parents and siblings during the Christmas break in 2015.

The accused lured the victim inside his house next to her farmhouse after exposing his private parts to her when she went to wash dishes at a tap outside his house.

When she entered the house, the man then raped her.

The man was 18-years-old at the time of the incident and the girl was 12-year-old.