SOMERSET WEST, South Africa — South Africa’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal by former Grand Slam tennis champion Bob Hewitt on Thursday and ruled he must serve a six-year jail sentence for the rapes and sexual assaults of young girls he coached decades ago.
A panel of three judges at the Supreme Court of Appeal said in a written judgment that the prison sentence given to Hewitt at the end of his trial was appropriate and fits “the criminal and the crime.”
Hewitt, now 76, was convicted and sentenced last year. The Supreme Court judges said he “showed no remorse for his vile deeds.”
He was found guilty of raping two girls and sexually assaulting a third in the 1980s and 1990s. The victims were minors at the time of the assaults. They are now grown women who had to wait more than two decades for justice.
Hewitt “exploited the complainants’ innocence and youth and forced them to submit to his wicked desires. He abused his position of authority and responsibility…
