NEWS
New fronts in the war on rape
November 30 2003
www.iol.co.za

By Charlene Smith

The government has launched an extensive campaign to fight violence against women and children and to tackle the blight of rape.

A range of initiatives will begin in the next few months including:

A Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) project that will give certain non-governmental organisations, police units and rape clinics mobile devices similar to cellphones to punch in details of a rape the minute it is reported. This will go into a database that will instantly compute and track the information. Investigators will know on a day-to-day basis which areas are experiencing the most gang rape or child abuse. This will help criminal justice officials to know which areas to target for increased resources or raids in the instances of rapes committed near clubs, shebeens or schools.

A further 20 sexual offences specialist courts will be opened in addition to 50 rape courts launched since August 1999.

Ten more Thuthuzela (We Care) centres - where rape survivors receive medical care, including post-exposure prophylaxis to prevent IV - will be opened before April 2005. Rape survivors can return to them for follow-up HIV tests, counselling, liaison with the police and pre-trial preparation.

A Cape Town joint project advisory committee - that meets players in rape management, including the senior state advocate, prosecutors, police and NGOs - has proven so successful in increasing the rate of successful rape convictions that it is being tested in KwaZulu-Natal, Kimberley and Umtata. Carol Bower, the director of Rapcan, says the programme has led to better police work, more sensitivity towards rape survivors in courts and less hostility between the role players tasked with ending sexual violence.

A new task group under the auspices of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), with representatives from more than 15 major NGOs, will meet in Pretoria on Friday. Its mandate is to find ways to encourage those who experience sexual violence to testify, by improving the treatment they receive from the criminal justice system and by ensuring effective court preparation.
The group will issue its first report for comment in April and aims to finalise its work in July.

The NPA began a rape audit this week to assess all cases of sexual violence brought before courts in the past two years. The audit, the results of which should be available by February, will assess the time a case takes to come to court, the quality of evidence, the type of sentences imposed and the prevalence of rape according to area.

Two weeks ago 19 specialist rape forensic nurses began work in Gauteng. KwaZulu-Natal has more than 30 such nurses.

The range of efforts are being spearheaded by Bulelani Ngcuka, the national director of public prosecutions, and Thoko Majokweni, the head of the NPA's sexual offences unit.

Majokweni said November, December and January were the worst months for rapes because of the holidays and because people were generally outdoors more.

She said her unit was trying to find out why there was so much rape in South Africa and what the causal factors were.

"We need to prevent rape. We are trying to give better care not just to rape survivors, but also to identify and help high-risk families and reduce the trauma of these crimes, " she said.

In Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape, strong backing by provincial governments are spurring efforts.

Research by Nicro and other organisations shows that a high percentage of rape cases fail because rape survivors are so traumatised by the criminal justice system they are not able to testify efficiently.

In some instances, as an example, children are made to stand in the same court as a perpetrator and testify against him. In another instance a child's evidence was discredited when the child was asked if she was wearing clothes, she said no. Later evidence showed the child was wearing pyjamas. When questioned further, the child said pyjamas were "not clothes, they are pyjamas".

The urgent moves are to stop what rape organisations say is an increasing epidemic of rape.

This week the Teddy Bear clinic and Childline presented more than 300 cases of children being raped in schools by pupils and teachers and what they said was a failure by authorities to respond to their requests for action.

Two examples show how the criminal justice system has failed:
A 13-year-old girl from the Cape Flats was abducted by a gang of 10 thugs from Guguletu and held hostage for two weeks while they repeatedly raped her. The child had to receive corrective surgery after she escaped on September 3. Although she has said she would recognise the perpetrators, Mitchell's Plain police who are investigating the matter said no identikits had been developed and no arrests had been made.
No efforts have been made to place the depressed child in foster care; she lives in an abusive family with her alcoholic father.
In another case, the Krugersdorp sexual offences unit withdrew charges, without explanation, after a mentally handicapped 17-year-old boy was sodomised by two other boys in a place of safety on the West Rand. The boy, who shows marked antisocial behaviour, is on a four-year waiting list for institutional care, yet welfare officials have given no assistance to his parents.

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