Court awards R538 000 to rape victim

returning home from a Motherwell tavern. She is unemployed and has one child.

The judge ordered the department to pay the woman damages of:

ý R100 000 for wrongful arrest and detention.

ý R425 000 in respect of general damages for assault.

ý R13 113 for any future medical expenses resulting from her being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the incident.

ý He also ordered the department to pay the costs of the suit.

Despite Judge Pickering’s findings, the policeman involved has not been prosecuted for rape and was also cleared of any wrongdoing at an internal disciplinary hearing held by the Independent Complaints Directorate.

“I intend to order that a copy of the judgment be sent to the national and provincial police commissioners. it is clear that something was very rotten at the Motherwell police station,” Judge Pickering said.

“In the light of the evidence it is in my view surprising that the Direc- tor of Public Prosecutions declined to prosecute [him].”

The woman had gone through a terrifying ordeal after her arrest, exacerbated by the way officials at the Motherwell police station handled the matter after she had laid a complaint of rape at the police station at 3.40pm, he said.

“Despite this, she was held unlawfully in a traumatised state for a further 4½ hours before being taken out of the cells to make a statement and only taken to the doctor at midnight,” he said. The woman was on- ly released from custody after her visit to the doctor at the rape crisis centre at Dora Nginza Hospital, Judge Pickering said.

He had rejected the evidence of one of the police officers who had arrested the woman as she was returning from the tavern.

While the woman testified that she had shared three beers and was not drunk, the constable who arrested her told the court she was apprehended because she was stumbling into the street. Judge Pickering called the arresting officer a pathet- ic witness whose evidence was filled with inconsistencies, contradictions and garrulousness.

“Her evidence that the plaintiff was so drunk she could not speak intelligibly and had to be [held up], is utterly improbable when viewed against her evidence as to what happened at the police station.

“Within less than 20 minutes, the almost paralytically drunk plaintiff had miraculously sobered up to the extent that . . . she was able to furnish her full particulars, including her address.”

Regarding the policeman who committed the alleged offence, Judge Pickering said “there were [points in] his testimony where it became clear that he was fabricating evidence to distance himself from the plaintiff’s identification of him as her alleged assailant”.

He said the man matched the complainant’s description and the doctor who examined her that night confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted and sodomised within a 24-hour period.

“In my view, therefore the probabilities are overwhelmingly to the effect that the plaintiff was indeed sexually assaulted whilst in detention at Motherwell police station.”