Dad’s rape charge trauma comes to end
Contemplated suicide while locked in freezing cells Marion Island to the Seychelles in a leap
AFTER five months of imprisonment for a crime he didn’t commit, a 50-yearold Havenside, Chatsworth father got to spend the weekend with his family.
He became a hated man after it was alleged he’d raped his nine-year-old and 15-yearold daughters, but it turned out he was wrongly accused.
Charges against him were withdrawn in the Durban Regional Magistrate’s Court by senior public prosecutor Val Mellis, on behalf of the State, earlier this week.
Due to the nature of the allegations, the man and his family cannot be named.
In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Tribune Herald, he recounted the emotional trauma of his family falling apart during his incarceration.
He was arrested in March after his daughter told her teacher she was “touched uncomfortably” by her father.
Last week, Mellis interviewed the nine-yearold, who denied any rape occurred.
On rebuilding family bonds, the father said: “It’s going to take a very long time for me to get back to where things were. My head is messed up because surviving jail with a rape charge over your head is not easy.”
The father-of-four admitted contemplating suicide while locked in a freezing cell.
“I was charged for something I never did. The media and people in the community convicted me and attacked my family,” he said.
He said he had forgiven his daughters, who were still being kept in a safe house.
“They are children and they make mistakes; I just want to see my family coming together.”
The man’s attorney, Suren Naidoo, said the outcry on social media when the charges emerged ruined his client’s reputation.
“We will sue for damages because social media convicted him before the courts could,” said Naidoo.
The man’s sister thanked those who stood by the family in the hope that justice would prevail and her family’s reputation would be restored.
“We believe the child was influenced,” she said.
Former chief executive of the Aryan Benevolent Home, Rajish Lutchman, who has dealt with child abuse cases, said children could be manipulated.
“Children could lie about these situations, but we need to understand why they lied,” he said. FROM the often freezing conditions of Marion Island to the balmy breezes of the Seychelles is quite a leap, but for Durban’s Nasreen Khan, it’s all in a day’s work.
On Marion Island, in the lower Atlantic Ocean, she monitored wildlife like seals and whales. She has now been appointed as a conservation officer on the island of Aride, in the Seychelles, not far from the main island of Mahe.
For her, this switch in focus is not too much of a leap of faith. “What is similar to Marion Island is that there are only eight people living on Aride. None of them are civilians. It is just the manager and the conservation officers,” she explained.
Asked what she would be doing there, she said there are different monitoring programmes on the island. These involve monitoring the coral reefs, the turtles and the birds.
“I will be involved in all of them but also able to run a personal project.” She says she already has various ideas but will be able to solidify these once arriving there and assessing their feasibility, timeline and her work schedule.
She is considering studying the pollution effect of microplastics and also an in-depth study on turtles. To do this, she says she will have to speak to supervisors in South Africa about collecting data, keeping notes, etc.
Khan said she had applied to the Seychelles to become a conservation officer in the middle of last year and confirmation had come earlier this year.
“I feel so excited,” she enthused. I’ll be able to experience a new place, a completely different climate to Marion Island, work with different animals and get to learn about a different ecosystem.”