A 14-year-old Durban girl has claimed her father who is serving three life sentences for raping her is innocent.

"I would like to see my father released because he is innocent. He did not rape me. My mother told me to tell the police that my father raped me," said the grade five pupil in an interview with Sapa on Friday.

The father was found guilty in 2005 of the rape which the court heard took place in 2003 when the girl was seven-years-old.

The girl’s mother, who was accused of "coaching" the girl to implicate the father, passed away in 2007.

The girl has now asked the Prisoners and Detainees Law Office for Human Rights to facilitate the release of her father.

The girl said a letter her father wrote to her school principal had touched her deeply.

He wrote a letter to his daughter's school principal asking him to speak to the girl since the mother had died.

In the letter, which has a prison stamp, the father said it was going to be easy to find the truth from the girl "since the mother would no longer intimidate her".

In the letter, the father claimed the girl's mother had wanted him imprisoned because he was involved in a relationship with another woman.

The principal said he had approached Derrick Mdluli of the Prisoners and Detainees Law Office for Human Rights after his attempts to relate the contents of the letter to the girl's aunt failed. The girl lives with her aunt.

"I believe that people like Mdluli are more capable to deal with issues like this. I have contacted them because this issue deals with one of my pupils," said the principal.

Mdluli said he would help the girl visit her father in prison after she had been seen by psychologists. The girl said she had not seen her father since his arrest.

"What I will do is to make an urgent court application because this matter is causing trauma to the child and the man is in jail," said Mdluli.

He said the Centre for Child Law in Pretoria had agreed to help the girl with counselling.

According to Mdluli, getting the father released would not be easy.

He gave the example of the case of a man from Stanger outside Durban who had been released on R50 bail after his niece confessed she had lied that she had been raped by him.

He had already served nine years of his 15 year sentence.

The Supreme Court of Appeal was yet to make a decision on the matter.

KwaZulu-Natal prosecutions head Shamila Batohi was not immediately available to comment.

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