Justice rare for rape victims

Convictions secured in only an eighth of 8 512 cases reported in East Cape

IN a shocking disclosure, police have revealed that only one in every eight rape cases reported in the Eastern Cape leads to a conviction, while the remaining cases are either sidelined by red tape or thrown out by the courts. According to figures provided by Police Minister Nathi Nhleko, of the 8 512 rapes reported in the Eastern Cape – the highest in the country – only 1 099 resulted in convictions.

Reacting to the disclosures yesterday, a national anti-rape campaigner and Port Elizabeth rape victim lashed out at the law-enforcement and justice system as a whole, saying it was full of “loopholes” for rapists.

A prominent national anti-gender violence and child abuse group also says that the extent of the problem is vastly underestimated.

The figures – issued last week in response to questions by DA shadow police minister Dianne Kohler Barnard in parliament – paint a bleak picture of dwindling conviction rates, with thousands of sexual predators left out on the streets.

Experts said an over-burdened court system coupled with DNA backlogs and difficulties sourcing evidence from witnesses contributed to cases taking years to be finalised.

Businesswoman Andy Kawa, who launched the Kwanele! Enuf is Enuf organisation and campaign to address rape and sexual violence after she was raped on Kings Beach in Port Elizabeth in 2010, said last night that “a conviction means the case was actually investigated”.

“Where there are no convictions, chances are that the case was not investigated or investigated properly.

“These are shocking [rape stat] figures.

“And there are lots of issues involved here, one of them being that there seems to be a lack of will by police to investigate properly.

“Other important concerns are that in many cases police don’t even have the proper tools. They have been known to send victims ‘please call me’ SMSes, because they don’t even have airtime to communicate with the victims and to do their jobs.

“In other cases, they don’t even have vehicles to get to victims,” Kawa said, highlighting the importance of the first 48 hours in investigating rape cases.

Among other concerns, she said prosecutors often accepted badly investigated cases or incomplete dockets and then took the cases to court, and prosecutors sometimes only contacted the victims a day before the court dates, while the perpetrators enjoyed full consultations with legal aid lawyers prior to the trial.

“There are loopholes in the entire system – from the investigators to the magistrates – and they all perpetuate a chain of silence throughout the system,” Kawa said. “There is failure in the whole system. It should not take so long for justice to be served, even for those who actually do get justice.

“Personally, I have been waiting for over a year for justice to be served. Justice delayed is justice denied,” she said.

Vincentia Dlamini-Ngobese, spokeswoman for Woman and Men Against Child Abuse, which has gained national prominence for its activism against rape and gender violence, said last night the extent of the problem was much worse than the figures showed.

“While these figures are shocking, we need to keep in mind that a significant number of rapes are not even reported, so to say that there are convictions in just one in eight cases reported to police presents a horrific picture of what is actually happening,” she said.

Dlamini-Ngobese said the legal process, once a rape had been reported was far too long and contributed to the lack of more convictions. “There are cases, as an example, where a neighbour perpetrates a rape.

“The process takes so long and the victim does not want to live next to her attacker, so that victim will move away, even to another province, which then later creates many more complications and may impact on a

conviction.

“Medical personnel also need better training to collect evidence and the police need better training and supervision.

“These are just a few aspects of this problem which need to be addressed. The entire system needs to be assessed,” she said, adding that “secondary victimisation” by authorities was an issue.

In one example of the failures in the system which Dlamini-Ngobese is dealing with at present, police have said that a rape victim in a particular case is “untraceable”.

“When we looked into it, we discovered that the investigators simply did not want to drive into an informal settlement, so the investigator simply told his superiors that the victim was untraceable. “This is shocking,” she said. “We have found that investigators’ superiors do not check on the juniors and take no responsibility for what they are doing or not doing.”

The statistics presented by Nhleko show a three-year provincial breakdown on rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, child pornography, child prostitution, sexual grooming and other specified sexual offences.

Nationally, 46 393 rapes were reported to police in the 2013-14 financial year. Of these, the Eastern Cape accounted for 8 512 of the cases.

Only 5 017 of the Eastern Cape rape cases reached court, of which 1 099 resulted in convictions.

Of the rapes reported nationally, only 27 595 cases went to court, resulting in a dismal 5 892 convictions.

Other figures provided by Nhleko, reveal a low conviction rate in sexual assault cases as well.

During the 2013-14 financial year, 715 sexual assault cases were reported in the Eastern Cape while 6 783 cases were reported nationally. Of the Eastern Cape cases, 409 went to court. Convictions were secured in only 95 of these cases.

Nationally, 4 025 of the 6 783 sexual assault cases went to court with convictions in just 865 of the cases.

Eastern Cape police spokeswoman Colonel Sibongile Soci said some sexual offence cases took several years to finalise, which contributed to the low conviction rate.

If the figures were calculated from the beginning to the end of a case and not over a year period, a more favourable result would be presented.

Soci said a multi-disciplinary approach was taken when dealing with sexual offences and the police were not the only ones involved in solving such crimes.

Some of the problems hampering convictions in sexual crime cases included witnesses not appearing in court, victims withdrawing criminal complaints, traditional authority mediation between the victim and perpetrator, and the influence of alcohol during the incident causing the victim to forget pertinent details.

Other contributing factors identified by the provincial management were that the Eastern Cape had fewer sexual offences courts and Thuthuzela Care Centres – previously known as Rape Crisis Centres – than other provinces.

Efforts to rectify the situation included appointing more forensic social workers.

“Training and upskilling detectives could go a long way in improving the output in courts, but this factor cannot be seen in isolation to other contributing factors in the handling of sexual offence cases,” police said.

Former paralegal Lisa Vetten, a researcher at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, said an overburdened justice system contributed to the conviction rate, as well as DNA evidence taking too long.