A female nursery school teacher has been convicted of raping and drowning her partner's four-year-old daughter by sitting on her in the bath.
Amber-Lee Hughes was found guilty of the crimes against Nada-Jane Challita in the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg on Thursday.
She was arrested after the four-year-old was discovered dead in a bathtub filled with water in 2023, inside the apartment Hughes shared with her father, Elie Challita.
As the judge described the events that occurred on 23 January 2023, the day Nada-Jane was murdered, her father's face was visibly distressed.
Throughout the trial, which began earlier this year, Hughes insisted she was innocent and pleaded not guilty. It was not until last month that she confessed to drowning the girl after an argument with Challita over infidelity, but she continued to deny the rape.
