NEWS
Selebi's shocking porn video

September 12 2002 at 09:42PM


By Buhle Khumalo

When The Star went to show national Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi
horrific pictures of a child rape victim's injuries, he shocked us - with
hardcore pornographic images.

He looked at the medical pre-operative photograph of six-year-old
Alexandra rape victim Lerato's wounds and then produced a video of a man
having sex with a baby, the sounds of infantile crying clearly audible,
and a photograph of a woman being penetrated by a dog.

Selebi claimed the photograph of Lerato - which graphically shows how her
perineum was ripped and how her intestines bulged out between her legs -
was "pornographic".

'When I read the newspaper report, I asked myself: Where was the
mother?'
He then accused The Star and Johannesburg Hospital paediatric surgeon
Professor Peter Beale, who earlier this week challenged us to publish the
picture, of "distributing child pornography".

Beale should "not have taken those pictures in the first place", and if
they ended up being published on the Internet or anywhere else, he would
face prosecution, Selebi said.

He said The Star had done well not to meet Beale's challenge, or "you
would have been in serious trouble".

The printing of the picture would not only provide fodder for paedophiles,
but could also defeat the ends of justice by jeopardising any court
proceedings against Lerato's rapist, he argued.

Beale was outraged at the top cop's response, and said Selebi's
prosecution threat was "ridiculous".

'Why don't we say we don't want sex adverts, Big Brother, or
alcohol?'
"While the rapist is at large, Selebi threatens to arrest the surgeon who
spends dedicated hours in the theatre fixing up yet another (abused)
child. It (the photograph of Lerato) is legal evidence. What is child
pornography? It is medical-legal evidence. It will be shown in court,"
Beale said.

Selebi, who had evidently prepared himself thoroughly for the meeting, was
flanked throughout by Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual
Offences Unit national head Senior Superintendent Anneke Pienaar and two
senior liaison officers - Director Sally de Beer and Superintendent Selby
Bokaba.

Selebi dismissed the photograph of Lerato as nothing the police were not
already used to. When showed the picture, he displayed no emotion, and
said: "We live with these things daily - we see them every day."

Having seen the picture, he said: "We need not be shocked to generate a
response from us - we will react to find the perpetrators."

Lerato's parents have criticised the police for not reacting swiftly when
they reported their daughter missing early on Sunday.

About 4pm on Sunday, an hour before she was eventually found, her father
flagged down a passing patrol van in a desperate bid to get police to help
them.

Asked about this, Selebi responded: "Who judges if the police have done
their job? How does one determine the correct reaction time? The fault is
always with the police, isn't it?" he said, adding: "When I read the
newspaper report, I asked myself: Where was the mother?"

In South Africa, there was one police officer for every 456 people. Things
might be different if "we had the Big Brother cameras everywhere", Selebi
added.

He said the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit was
one of the most effective units under his command. He argued that nobody
acknowledged that police investigations had led to 97 life sentences being
passed on child rapists last year alone, or that 2 112 convictions were
obtained for child-sex offences.

Selebi said police could never prevent rapes from happening. "Police can
only know about a rape after it has happened. You cannot ask every man
with a child if their child is theirs.

"We cannot do DNA tests to check - we cannot police behind closed doors
and invade families to prevent rapes."

He said most rapes were committed by people known to the family of the
victim. The responsibility of protecting their children from, and
educating them about, rape lay with the public, he said.

Children needed to be taught not to accept things such as sweets from
strangers, or go off with strangers - or even men known to them - without
first alerting their parents.

Selebi then attacked the media for perpetuating rape. He said pressure
should be put on the media to educate the public about rape, and to stop
advertising pornography and sex.

Flipping through the classified pages of several daily newspapers, Selebi
questioned why the media was not blamed for the high incidence of rape.

"Why don't we say we don't want sex adverts, Big Brother, or alcohol -
which is used most of the time when a child is raped?" he asked.

"You must also realise that it is adults who do these things. Every person
in this country is as responsible for what happened to the 6-year-old.

"However, I will be getting a report to assess if there has been
inadequacies in (how police handled Lerato's case) - we will admit if we
are wrong," he said.

Selebi tried, about two hours after the interview was concluded, to make
The Star understand that elements of the interview were "off the record".

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