‘I am going to send more of my friends to do what I did and this time I am going to make sure they kill you’

ANIGHT out with five friends ended in horror for 26-year-old Lerato* and a friend four years ago. They had been drinking at a house in Twala section, Katlehong, when three men on the premises asked them to join them.

The women declined and later made their way home.

“I was walking out of the door. One of the guys started pulling me, telling me to come to his room. When I refused, we had a fight. I tried to whistle and scream for my friend when he hit me with a beer bottle.

“When I woke up it was morning. I didn’t know what had happened. All I remember is that I was scared.”

Her attacker insisted on walking her home. Along the way, she stumbled across one of her friends from the night before. She had been raped. The two women went to a nearby police station where, they said, a group of policemen made them retell their stories over and over.

“By the time we were done, there were six or seven of them quizzing us for details of what happened,” Lerato said.

They went to Natalspruit Hospital and received trauma counselling and treatment.

A month later, Lerato realised she was pregnant. “I was so shocked. For the first time I knew what had happened to me that night. He changed me and took my virginity.”

She terminated the pregnancy.

But even though she altered her police complaint to that of rape, nothing has been done.

The man who raped her still walks the streets around her neighbourhood, she said.

“Once he even sent one of his friends to me and when I slapped him, he said: ‘You’re a bully. I am going to send more of my friends to do what I did and this time I am going to make sure they kill you.’ ” * Not her real name