Rape of 7-year-old child: mother accuses police of being slow to act

The mother of a learner at a Matatiele school says the police have been slow to act after her child was raped at the school. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

• A mother from Matatiele in the Eastern Cape is accusing police of dragging their feet investigating the rape of her seven-year-old daughter at her school.
• Eastern Cape police spokesperson Majola Nkohli denied that police were “dragging their feet” but rather blamed delays on “a shortage of manpower”.
• The provincial education department is investigating the school’s handling of the matter.

An Eastern Cape mother says police in Matatiele have been dragging their feet investigating her seven-year-old daughter’s rape. She also says Bergview College, the private school where she says the rape took place, failed to report it immediately to the education department.

The girl was allegedly raped after school while waiting for her transport on 14 October, though her parents only became aware of the incident the following day. As soon as a doctor confirmed that the child had been raped the parents reported it to police.

The police took the child to the nearest Thuthuzela centre for an assessment. But, the mother says, little has been done by the police since then. She says

• the police have failed to report back to her;
• no DNA samples were taken from the men close to the child; and
• a statement was only taken from the child last week, three weeks after the rape.

Eastern Cape police spokesperson Majola Nkohli confirmed that police are investigating a case of rape. Asked about the mother’s allegations, Nkohli said the matter was “very sensitive” and would “require the involvement of various specialists such as forensic social workers as the victim is very young”.

According to the mother, whose name is withheld to protect the identity of the child, the incident happened after school while her daughter was waiting for her transport on 14 October. It is alleged that a caretaker at the school had asked the child to help him clean one of the classrooms. The little girl says she only remembers feeling very tired in the classroom, but does not remember what happened while she was there.

The mother says she only discovered later that day that her daughter’s scholar transport had arrived late to pick her up. She says the school usually phones to notify her, but on this day they did not do so.

She told GroundUp her daughter acted strangely when she got home. The following morning, the child didn’t want to go to school but her mother sent her anyway.

But when the child got home from school on 15 October, she was going to the toilet frequently and complaining of severe stomach pains. The following morning, the mother says, her daughter told her that she couldn’t walk and was in pain. “None of us thought of rape. But I took her to the doctor, who told me that my daughter was sexually assaulted.”

“This was the most painful moment for me as I’m also a victim of rape. I know what rape does to a person,” said the mother.

She said she reported the matter to police on 16 October, and officers accompanied them to a Thuthuzela centre at the local hospital. Doctors there confirmed the child had been raped and took a specimen they believed to be semen.

The mother said she then told the school what had happened.

The child was hospitalised for two weeks in Port Shepstone and treated for an infection. When she came home, her mother says, the little girl did not want to go to school and insisted on her parents “guarding” her on the two days she did go back.

She says for weeks the police said nothing to her.

When she contacted the police station in Matatiele in November, she was told that the investigative officer was on leave. She was transferred to another officer who said that they couldn’t do anything because the child “didn’t want to talk”.

“I asked her what DNA samples were taken from my daughter? And why none of the men who were around my daughter that day were not tested? The officer told me she cannot do that because those people have rights,” the mother said.

Only when she revealed that she was a warrant officer at another station did police start paying attention to her daughter’s case, she says. “I then started receiving calls from social workers.” Last week an investigating officer finally came to take a statement from the child.

GroundUp asked police why a social worker had only been assigned weeks after the case was opened and why an investigating officer only came to take the child’s statement last week. Police spokesperson Nkohli blamed delays on “a shortage of manpower”.

He said that the mother’s frustration was understandable. “But it must also be noted that cases like these need specialists who are not always available and have to be booked,” he said. “We cannot run away from the fact that there’s a shortage of manpower but police are doing everything they can to solve the case.”

In a letter dated 3 December, the chair of Bergview College’s board of trustees, Danie Van Zyl, told parents that there was “at this stage no evidence that this unfortunate incident happened on our school premises”.

Van Zyl said that the school was working with the child’s family, police, departments of education and social development to resolve the matter.

Eastern Cape education spokesperson Malibongwe Mtima said the department is investigating “to test the allegations”. “In the meantime, the child has been visited and is receiving psychosocial support from the district and other departments.”

Meanwhile, the mother says, her daughter is having nightmares.

“My child deserves justice,” she said.

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