While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Special Assignment or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.

 

FENLEY: The latest spate of rapes and murders of young children has left the country reeling with horror and communities filled with anger over government’s seemingly inability to protect their children. About fifty children are raped in South Africa every day but child rights activists say thousands more go unreported and only a few culprits end up behind bars.

 

UPS: - VOICER - In Eldorado Park an angry crowd gathers at the local police station. They demand to see a suspect who they believe killed a six year old girl Gairoenisha Ganchi. Ganchi went missing last week. Her body was finally found close to her home a day later.  And in Cape Town it was a Black September for two families and it ended with two almost identical coffins on the same day. Three year old Joey Josephs disappeared on the twenty first of September in Delft while playing outside her home. A frantic search followed. Her body was found the next day in dense bushes not far from her home. Across town in Steenberg, eight year old Veronique Solomons had disappeared two days earlier. She was abducted near her home. While family members feared the worst, her mother remained hopeful even after the charred remains of a child were discovered the same day. DNA tests later confirmed that it was the body of Veronique. 

 

UPS: - DR MARCEL LONDT; CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKER - The degree of violence is escalating and it’s certainly becoming more sadistic.

 

UPS: - RACHEL JEWKES; MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL - We have about seventeen thousand rapes of children per year and about six thousand are under the age of thirteen.

 

UPS: - BONTLE SETSHOGOE; COMMUNITY LEADER - More and more children are being raped more and more children are being killed. They are not safe in our communities.

 

PRE -TITLE: EYE ON THE CHILD

 

UPS: - VOICER - It’s a Friday night in October in Louisvale, in remote Upington in the Northern Cape. Alcohol flows freely a teenage mother leaves her nine month old baby unattended in one of the rooms. Unnoticed a young man enters the room while the party continues outside. Later that night the grandmother makes a shocking discovery.

 

UPS: - GERTRUIDA RENS; NEIGHBOUR – that night I was standing at the small gate when Poppie, baby Tsepang’s grandmother came there holding the child. She called me to come and look. I saw that at the child’s vagina, there was a hole and it was bleeding. I told her then that it looked as if the child was raped.

 

UPS: - VOICER - South Africa hung its head in shame when the news broke. The rape of Baby Tsepang as she became known later rocked the nation and made international headlines. We were labelled the baby rape capital of the world.

 

UPS: - RACHEL JEWKES; MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL - I don’t know if we are the rape capital of the world but we definitely have a lot of rape in South Africa, and comparable figures I have looked at with for e.g. the United States suggest that might have three times as many rape cases reported to the police as they do over there, so we are pretty high and amongst the Interpol members we been at the top of their league table. What is unusual is that a third of child rapes are under are under the age of thirteen so we do have a lot of rapes of younger children.

 

UPS: - VOICER - The community was outraged. Police, in a hurry to find the culprit, bungled the investigation. Initially six men were arrested for the rape including the child’s own grandfather. They were all later cleared of all charges. Baby Tsepang was taken to Kimberley Hospital.

 

UPS: - DR. HAMID SHABBIR; CEO KIMBERLEY HOSPITAL - When the child came she was quite brutally injured most of the injuries were in the perineum, anal, vaginal all the surrounding structures, they were all damaged.

 

UPS: - GERTRUIDA RENS; NEIGHBOUR – I was shocked that night. It was heart rending and I still cannot get over the fact that somebody could rape such a small child. I still feel sad about it.

 

UPS: - LEONI GOEIMAN; UNIT COMMANDER FCS – We established a task team during that time I was part of the task team to look for the real perpetrator so blood samples was taken was a match with the DNA’s real perpetrator was arrested. It was David Potse. Where he was sentenced to twenty five years for the rape case on baby Tsepang and for the indecent assault you get eighteen months.

 

UPS: - VOICER - The community has since moved on, but sexual violence against children remains a problem.

 

UPS: - LEONI GOEIMAN; UNIT COMMANDER FCS – After the baby Tsepang case there was an increase in the rape and indecent assault against children because we go out and have anti rape campaigns we talk to the community to speak out these crimes so that is why we have we had an increase in this type of crime because of the reporting.

 

UPS: - VOICER - Four years later little has changed. In fact according to the latest crime statistics child rape figures have gone up. We asked some of the experts who work with child sexual offenders, why men rape children.

 

UPS: - DR MARCEL LONDT; CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKER - The men that I work with say that they rape kids because they can, and it satisfies a whole lot of needs, what I detected from the violent men that I’ve been exposed to is that. Worked with is that it is not just a between the legs problem as it is a between the ears problem so there is a host of reasons why they do this.

 

UPS: - RACHEL JEWKES; MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL - Girl children are very much at the bottom of the pile and because of the high status of men and particularly older men in a way in which their behaviour is seen as unassailable. Some men rape because they want to communicate to their rape victim that they have power over that victim for e.g. when we found out what really happened in the case of baby Tsepang that that rape was an act of revenge against the mother. Men can get a hard-on by thinking about anything and you can have sex with a child while you are thinking about an adult woman, the two don’t have to be linked together. But in the majority of cases the erection will not be caused by sexual desire for that particular child with younger children.

 

UPS: - DR MARCEL LONDT; CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKER - There would be fantasies so by the time that the situation presents itself that person has already reinforced and played over the fantasy in their head so yes there will be an erection.

 

UPS: - VOICER - Four years ago the international media spread rumours that South African men have a bizarre belief that sex with a virgin can cure aids. This was found to be untrue.

 

UPS: - RACHEL JEWKES; MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL - We’ve done research to find out what evidence there is to support this and what we concluded to the extent that it occurs that it is very very uncommon. I’ve only spoken to two service providers who’ve ever seen a case.

 

AD BREAK 1

 

UPS: - VOICER - This is Athlone in Cape Town. In this street pitched battles were fought against the injustices of Apartheid. Nowadays a new battle is being fought a fight against the abuse of innocent children. It was here at a child’s birthday party that a three year old Fozia not her real name became the victim of a vicious sexual predator.

 

UPS: - AMINA RAJAP; FAMILY FRIEND - The little girl and her mother and sister was here at the party.  Where the perpetrator picked her up in front of the gate he actually took her in here where the gap in the vibracrete and do his thing here in the yard and then threw her over to the neighbours yard and jumped over where the neighbours husband found him in the yard.

 

UPS: - STEPHEN LOMBERG; NEIGHBOUR  - Then I heard the noise and I saw the guy climbing over the fence here over the vibracrete, and he came into the yard and I left there and I ran outside and I got him in the yard and I warned him and everything then I let him go. About an half an hour later my wife called and we see this little girl standing here she was beaten up he face was open on the side she was bruised.

 

UPS: - AMINA RAJAP; FAMILY FRIEND – The neighbour wife actually came here and ask who little girl is this. So the mother saw that it was her child. Her face was so badly kicked she was totally naked.

 

UPS: - VOICER - Pictures taken during the party show the alleged perpetrator Edward Hendricks playing with some of the children.

 

UPS: - DR MARCEL LONDT; CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKER - The child rapist does not see his victim in the same as he would view or construct other children in his life, so its quite possible that in another part of this persons life they come across as very nice, very caring. However the moment that child is identified or recruited as a victim that child becomes an object of no importance.

 

UPS: - VOICER - The sister of the alleged perpetrator was also at the party that Saturday. She says her brother was recently released on remission of sentence after serving five years for sodomising a young boy.

 

UPS: - LOUISE “KOEKIE” STEER; SISTER OF ACCUSED -It just break me really cause I mean I cannot believe my brother can do something like them, and I mean she is only a baby. For myself if he was feeling jars (horny) he could have just come to me and maybe or tell me, Koekie I feel jars (horny) cant you organise me a girl, I mean there on the street there are a lot of girls they want to get paid, you can give them fifty rand.

 

UPS: - AMINA RAJAP; FAMILY FRIEND – They never  shouldn’t have let him out  never because it did not even take him two months to be amongst our people to do the same thing to another youngster.

 

UPS: - LORINDA BERGH; DEPT CORRECTIONAL SERVICES – This person came in for indecent assault he was already granted an unconditional release date somewhere in September, and when you go out unconditionally that is when your sentence has expired we cannot keep the person in the prison any more, he has to go back in the community and then the department function stops, if this person had been released two months later he probably would have done the same thing. The department in this instance of this offender took great care to see exactly what happened with him over the period of time, he was also requested to continue will sexual offender treatment programme. So what the department actual did was to follow through and monitor this particular guy that we’re talking about now very carefully.

 

UPS: - DR MARCEL LONDT; CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKER - The programs that exist it not enough it’s inadequate. There needs to be a catchment area where they’re held accountable, where they are monitored and supervised upon release. You cannot have a prisoner walk out of prison and straight into the community and it becomes business as usual.

 

UPS: - LORINDA BERGH; CORRECTIONAL SERVICES - We need our partners in the community to assist the dept and that is where the dept is moving at the moment, that the society has a responsibility to assist the dept of correctional services, we can never do it just by ourselves.

 

UPS: - DR MARCEL LONDT; CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKER - There’s a group of people that will keep on preying on innocent children on communities and there violence will become more brutal, more sadistic, and we will have to find a way to talk to that.  Because the bottom line is you can never cure a sex offender, once a sex offender always a sex offender, however there are some of then that can respond if they are given the correct skills, and correct knowledge and that’s your lower risk sex offender not the kind of person that would brutalise an infant or a very young child, those folk do not respond to any intervention whatsoever.

 

AD BREAK 2

 

UPS: - VOICER – “Lebo” not her real name is only four. Already life has dealt her a double blow. She’s an aids orphan and a rape victim living proof of a growing statistic. She now lives with her grandmother.  Shortly after she was born both her parents died of Aids. She seems happy as she plays with her friends. For the moment she seems to have forgotten her rape trauma.  A man she knew had allegedly used an older child to lure her to his house. He then sent the older child away and raped her. Later her grandmother became suspicious when the child was brought back home.

 

UPS: - VICKY SIDIMELA; CARETAKER -The granny saw that the child was weak the child start crying…when the child start sleeping the granny saw the blood on the panty the granny start screaming find the child was bleeding she came to me saying eish! That guy raped my child

 

UPS: - VOICER - The alleged rapist ran away but was caught by members of the community. The victim later identified him. But this is not where the little girl’s ordeal ended. Raped just after eleven on a Sunday morning she was admitted soon after to the Nthabiseng Thuthuzela centre based at Baragwanath Hospital. Nthabiseng is one of government’s one-stop centres for rape victims. They’re supposed to be treated and given support here and a rape investigation should begin.

 

UPS: - VICKY SIDIMELA; CARETAKER - they sent us from one person to another and it was late now eight or nine. Then when he(nurse)phones the doctor the doctor says tell those people to go home and they must come tomorrow morning.

 

UPS: - MOHAU MAKHOSANE; LEGAL REP NTHABISENG CENTRE - If that was the situation then it was wrong we are still trying to investigate what then transpired. In this particular case what happened is this child was seen by one of our highly regarded doctors at that facility who has been working there for many years in his findings he found that the child was sexually assaulted and there was lacerations. In cases of a child we do not do what we call invasive examinations in other words we do not go in to or beyond the hymen because that is very uncomfortable for children. He referred the child for general anesthesia and for collection of whatever specimen.

 

UPS: - VOICER - Our investigation revealed that the victim spent more than four hours waiting for a doctor at the rape centre. She was then referred to Baragwanath. Even there her internal injuries weren’t stitched up until the next day.

 

UPS: - DR. EMMA BONDARENKO; CEO BARAGWANATH HOSPITAL –on the tenth of July the child has been referred to the gynecologist from Nthabiseng Clinic. We’ve got a lot of operation going on this was not an emergency she was planned as a plan for tomorrow. It was not an emergency and the theatres were busy.

 

UPS: - VOICER - Community leaders expressed outrage at the way Lebo’s case was handled.

 

UPS: - BONTLE SETSHOGOE; COMMUNITY LEADER - We are going to take further action because if we are not acting these things will keep on happening We are saying there is some slack somewhere with the government on top. The government put laws in place and policies in place but down there we find there is a lot of flaws.

 

UPS: - VOICER - Outside the Protea Magistrates Court, there is concern over the handling of the case.

 

UPS: - BONTLE SETSHOGOE; COMMUNITY LEADER - we are talking about a four year old child that had been molested and abused and the chills is in pain and people are playing around with all that.  And when we asked was the child swapped the prosecutor say I did not see anything on the record those things are the ones that letting the perpetrators go scott free because those are the things that were supposed to be done by the police.

 

UPS: - VOICER - Only a small percent of child rape cases ends in a conviction.

 

UPS: - RACHEL JEWKES; MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL - The majority of rapes never get reported to the police even if cases do go to court we only get a custodial sentence in seven percent of rape cases.  So this vast majority of men who rape women and children in this country never end up with any meaningful punishment for what they did.

 

UPS: - VOICER - One woman has come up with a drastic approach to the problem of rape in the country…

 

UPS: - SONETTE EHLERS; DESIGNER OF RAPEX – It’s got an applicator, it comes with an applicator that she can put it in the vagina, and this releases it in the vagina also this very same applicator you use to remove it with and once it is intact, it actually opens in the vagina and the moment there is penetration it opens and can receive any size penis. All this is attached to the shaft skin of the penis. Also the hooks are extremely short so they only go into the skin they do not penetrate the spongy area. He cannot urinate and he’s got to go to a doctor he’s got to turn himself in.

 

UPS: - VOICER – Sonette is currently working on a device for children.

 

UPS: - SONETTE EHLERS; DESIGNER OF RAPEX - I am working at this stage I’ve done the first part of the children’s identikit. It’s nothing that they insert it will be almost like a little garment that they will wear the moment you will molest a child everyone around you will know, the  mother will know and the neighbours and everybody will know about it

 

UPS: - VOICER - Countrywide many parents fear for the safety of their children.

In Eldorado Park where six yr old Gairoenisha Ganchi went missing anger at police inaction spilled out onto the streets.

 

UPS: - LORINDA BERGH; DEPT CORRECTIONAL SERVICES – The very scary part for me is that there are far more sex predators outside in the community than there are here in correctional facilities and that should concern communities.

 

UPS: - DR MARCEL LONDT; CLINICAL SOCIAL WORKER - Unfortunately sex offenders who use that level of violence are addicted to that level of violence and they nurture their addiction, they are not going to give it up without a fight. So if they get blocked in one community they simply find another community that is more vulnerable.

 

UPS: - VOICER -The scars on the face of little Fozia are beginning to heal, but no-one knows how deep the wounds on the inside are. Baby Tsepang has since been placed in the care of foster parents. She is doing well. The case against Lebo’s alleged assailant is still continuing in the Protea magistrates court in Soweto. Meanwhile the senseless violence against children continues with no apparent end in sight