Cape Town – Thirty-nine year-old Anthea Kleynhans was sentenced in the Western Cape High Court to 18 years' imprisonment for the murder of her boyfriend's 3-year-old daughter, Lache Stols, the National Prosecution Authority (NPA) said on Friday.
The court sentenced Kleynhans to 13 years for murder and seven years for child abuse on Thursday.
Two years of the child abuse sentence will run concurrently with the murder sentence.
Judge Nolwazi Boqwana said that a life sentence was not appropriate.
Boqwana found substantial and compelling circumstances for the court not to deviate from the prescribed minimum sentence for Kleynhans, who is a first offender.
NPA spokesperson Eric Ntabazalila said Kleynhans had abused the toddler over a period of three months.
He said Lache had bruises and lacerations all over her body.
She had broken arms, a fractured skull, a bruised rib cage as a result of being squeezed, cuts on her mouth indicating that she was punched and burn marks on her feet.
Ntabazalila said the worst injuries were determined to have been inflicted 18 hours before Lache died.
A doctor who conducted the post-mortem described her injuries as "the worst kind of abuse" he had ever seen.
