A woman was convicted on Monday of hiring a hit squad to murder her lover's baby, ending a trial that had dominated headlines for months with details of South Africa's first known contract killing of an infant.
Dina Rodrigues was found guilty of murder for orchestrating the June 2005 killing of six-month-old Jordan-Leigh Norton -- her then-boyfriend's child from a previous relationship.
Cheers erupted as the verdict was read in the packed Cape Town court room, where Norton family supporters wore pink in sympathy with the child victim. Jordan's body, clad in pink clothing, was found in a drain in Pretoria.
"We are glad for the decision," the baby's grandfather, Vernon Norton, told the South African Press Association, adding that the family hoped Rodrigues would be sentenced to life in prison next month.
The case has riveted people in South Africa -- where an estimated 1,100 children are killed each year -- in part because both the baby and Rodrigues were white and from privileged backgrounds, whereas most cases involving violence against children involve black and underprivileged defendants and victims.
High Court Judge Basheer Waglay also convicted four men of murder and robbery in the case.
The four men had been hired by Rodrigues for a total of 10,000 rands (US$1,500) to commit the crime and posed as delivery men to gain access to the home of Jordan-Leigh's grandparents, prosecutors said.
They stabbed the infant in the neck, and tried to make the murder look like a botched robbery, prosecutors said.
Cases such as Jordan's have led to a recent campaigns drawing attention to the problem of violence against children.
"We have never had to deal with this level, intensity or numbers of crime against children," Childline head Joan van Niekerk said, noting her charity receives about 1 million phone calls from children reporting abuse each year. "Every year I start the year by saying it cannot get worse, and it does."
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