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.
Hughes and Challita had a turbulent defined by multiple altercations, during which she continually threatened to harm the child, according to the prosecution authority.
Judge Richard Mkhabela described to the court how Hughes premeditated the murder the child.
‘The accused made the threat. She has the propensity to make violent threats. The objective evidence shows that after stopping communication with Mr Challita at 16:35, Mr Challita continued sending the accused messages but she did not respond but had read the messages.’
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
She developed a romantic relationship with Elie Challita in 2021, and moved in with him and his young daughter
According to the evidence handed over to the court, the nursery school teacher also raped the girl by inserting foreign objects into her genital, Eyewitness News reported.
The judge told the court that it was unnecessary to review the evidence about whether the drowning was accidental because of Hughes’ admission.
‘The accused’s latest admissions… is an admission that she drowned the deceased by sitting on top of her, and further that the drowning caused the deceased’s death,’ he said.
He added that Hughes’ ‘belated admission is incongruent with the scientific and medical evidence’ presented by forensic pathologist Dr Hestelle van Stadan, who conducted the post-mortem examination.
‘The said admissions meet all the elements of murder,’ he noted.
Following the drowning, Hughes reportedly described making three attempts to take her own life.
She told the court she had been suffering with borderline personality disorder but admitted she was fully aware of her actions.
She developed a romantic relationship with Challita in 2021, and moved in with him and his young daughter.
Hughes confessed to the murder of Nada-Jane Challita, whose body was found in a bathtub in Johannesburg in 2023
She was charged with two counts of rape but was only convicted of one count at the conclusion of the trial.
At an earlier trial, Challita told the court that Hughes had grown jealous of his daughter.
He said: ‘[She] was jealous about me giving [Nada-Jane] more attention and spending more money on her.’
On the day of the murder, Challita had gone on a job interview, but Hughes seemed angry that he did not give her a goodbye kiss before leaving and suspected him of cheating.
She sent him a chilling text message saying: ‘You broke my heart; I’m going to burn yours. How could you do that to me?’
The father said: ‘I felt my heart fall from my chest; I felt something was very wrong.’
Speaking to the media following the verdict, Challita expressed his relief that the trial had finally come to a close after a two month delay.
Hughes’ sudden decision to switch her plea from not guilty in July postponed the trial just days before it was set to conclude.
She was charged with two counts of rape but was only convicted of one count at the conclusion of the trial, alongside being found guilty for murder
‘Thank God today we had progress,’ he said, reported the Citizen.
He was pleased with the guilty verdict but was disappointed that Hughes was only convicted of one count of rape instead of two. It’s a kind of ‘two-thirds closure’, he said.
‘That doesn’t bring my child back. Nothing will bring her back. So it’s a feeling mixed of anger and relief. It’s just mixed emotions.’
When asked if he expected Hughes to be imprisoned for life, Challita suggested no length of sentence would ever make up for the tragedy.
‘Obviously, I’m the parent of the child. The justice that I seek doesn’t exist in this world or in this lifetime.
‘We are all humans here. The judge is a human. No one can bring back what is lost.
‘So my real justice won’t be in this lifetime or on this earth, but it starts here, and it officially started today by the judge finding her guilty.’
Describing his emotions after the trial, he said: ‘I am feeling slightly better. I hope this feeling grows on me, but it also can never erase what happened to my child.
‘The real and initial victim here is my child, [who] was a human with a name and a character [of] her own, and she was tortured to death, and she was raped.
‘So, as much as I’m the victim, I’m not the 100 per cent victim here.’
Hughes’ lawyer requested that sentencing be delayed to allow the defence’s team time to prepare for the proceedings.
The proposal was accepted and sentencing was delayed to October 27.