Woman sues municipality for R1.4m after rape

A BULGARIAN orphan, who was rescued from horrific circumstances 13 years ago and brought to SA where she was raped years later, is suing the Witzenberg Municipality, which manages the resort where the rape took place.

The action was instituted in the Western Cape High Court on Wednesday, a month after the court appointed a city advo- cate as a curator ad litem to the orphan because she is unable to manage her own affairs.

Two minors were convicted of the rape in the Paarl Magistrate’s Court in 2009.

The tragic details of her life are set out in papers filed at the High Court in both the action against the municipality and the application for the appointment of the curator.

This is her story: Crystal Fisher (not her real name) weighed 7kg at the age of seven when an SA couple rescued her from a children’s home in Bulgaria in 1998.

Her biological parents had abandoned her two days after she was born. Paralysed and brain damaged, Crystal spent 18 months in an orphanage before being transferred to a children’s institution.

It was in 1998, that the SA couple – missionaries working in Bulgaria – visited the institution and met her.

Since she was the only one making an attempt to swat the flies from her body, the couple took it as a sign that she still had some spirit left in her.

They adopted her and brought her to SA, where she received speech, physical and occupational therapy.

However, her life took a different turn in January 2009 when two boys raped her at the squash courts of the Pine Forest Holiday Resort in Ceres.

Crystal alleges, through the curator ad litem, that she was sexually assaulted and raped as a result of lax security at the resort.

Court papers indicated that all the resort staff, except one employee, had had to attend a meeting at the City Hall in Ceres on the day the rape occurred.

As a result of the rape, Crystals’ cognitive ability regressed and there was a decline in her ability to communicate. She is claiming R1.427-million.