HEART-BREAKING INSTANCES OF CHILD ABUSE
In the Western Cape High Court in 2012, 27-year-old Soyiso Nofemele was convicted on 12 counts of rape of young children, 12 of abduction and one of murder. His victims, all from Khayelitsha, were aged between 2 and 8.
Two weeks ago, Enoch Bothata Lefuthane, 37, was found guilty by the Western Cape High Court of the rape of three young boys. Sentencing is scheduled for December 1.
In January, an 11-year-old boy was raped in a derelict building in Bonteheuwel. Barely two weeks earlier, a 9-year-old girl from Delft had been raped and set alight. The charges against her rapist and killer were withdrawn because the girl, who died in hospital, had been the only witness.
Early last year, Achmat Benting from Beacon Valley, known as “a grandfather to everyone”, was charged with four counts of rape, three of sexual assault and one of crimen injuria against six girls since 2010. Many more incidents allegedly came to the fore. Benting rejected the claims.
At the beginning of August, a man of 46 was arrested for the abduction and rape of a 4-year-old Manenberg girl. She had allegedly been abducted from her parent’s backyard shack and found hours later at a house in Athlone.
In March, a 5-year-old girl was allegedly raped by three older boys on the grounds of a Mitchells Plain school. Her parents only learnt of the incident almost two weeks afterwards. Her father said the school had “failed in its duties” by not notifying anyone.
In August last year, a 4-month-old baby was raped. She was admitted to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital and released after a month, after going to theatre five times for wound repair and cleaning. She had been snatched from her bed while her parents were sleeping. A boy in the house was also raped. A 25-year-old man was charged with abduction and rape.
In 2001, Human Rights Watch released a 138-page report stating that South African girls as young as 9 were being raped and sexually abused at schools in kwazulu-natal, Gauteng and the Western Cape, by classmates and teachers. One teacher described the actions as a “fringe benefit” because of low pay.
In June 2001, it was reported that schoolgirls on the Cape Flats and elsewhere were selling their bodies in exchange for lifts to school in taxis.
In November 2001, a father from Elsies River was given a seven-year sentence for raping his 14-year-old daughter in 1999. The judge found the man was “not the type of person who has to spend the rest of his life behind bars”. The father said he wanted to be the first to have sex with her.