Horror-rape girl names attacker
Clinging to life in hospital bed, child of 9 picks out man caught by residents
THIS IS the 9-year-old girl who was bound, raped, doused in petrol, set alight and left for dead in a field near a Cape Town highway.
It was a day later that a passerby found her, on Sunday.
Against all odds, she survived the attack and identified the man who had attempted to gruesomely murder her.
Now she lies in intensive care in a Cape Town hospital, with extensive burns from her neck down. Her alleged attacker was caught by members of the Delft community, and handed over to police. He was scheduled to appear in the Bellville Magistrate’s Court today on rape and attempted murder charges.
The girl’s grandmother said yesterday the little girl was able to talk.
It is believed she identified her 27-year-old attacker when police showed her a picture of the man caught by residents on Sunday.
Community Safety MEC Dan Plato commended the police for the swift arrest and applauded the community for handing him over.
“The situation could easily have turned into vigilante violence and I applaud those members of the community who kept calm in a volatile situation and ensured that justice could take its course,” Plato said yesterday.
But community leaders told a different story, saying residents had called for the man to be killed.
Peter Presents, a member of the Delft South neighbourhood watch, said after the man had been implicated by a resident, he was brought into Presents’s home for protection from a large crowd that had gathered outside.
Presents admits he was not aware of all the details initially.
When he found out what the man was accused of, he realised that he risked being branded a traitor by the angry residents. But he continued to shelter the man until police arrived. “We can’t allow someone to be killed,” he said.
Neighbourhood watch secretary Priscilla Mcentee said she had heard of the rape and attack and was heading to the scene when she spotted a man wearing what looked like a burnt T-shirt and bloody trousers.
She questioned him about the blood but he claimed he had been in a car crash.
Mcentee told her child to follow him and headed to Presents’s house.
When she heard what had happened, she told people about the man with the bloodstained clothes. He was apprehended and brought to Presents’s home, she said.
When news of the attack spread, a crowd gathered outside the house. Police arrived and arrested him.
The girl’s grandmother said she had last seen the girl after 8pm on Saturday. She was found on Sunday, badly burnt on a pile of rocks near the R300.
Relatives and neighbours rallied to take the girl to hospital, bundling her into a blanket.
The girl’s mother is ill and the girl sometimes stays with her father or grandmother.
Outside court this morning the girl’s father, who cannot be identified to protect her identity, said: “My poor child. He doused her in petrol.”
Her father was with the child’s aunt and dozens of Delft community members in court.
The girl’s father is originally from Mozambique. He moved to Cape Town in 2003 for work. His daughter was born in the city, but apart from her, he has no blood relatives in South Africa, he said.