Rape victim waits nine months for police to take statement

The victim, who cannot be named, told the City Times that the police and justice system have failed her horribly.

The City Times reported on the incident where the woman, who is in her 40s, was raped by three of the four intruders who entered her home on April 6, 2014.

The men gained entry into her home, which is in a security complex, by lifting the electric fence with a plastic pole.

They tied up her husband and beat him over the head with a gun, before partly undressing Amy*.

Her husband survived the attack.

“At that stage they undressed me, tied my hands, but hadn’t tied my feet so I knew what was coming,” said Amy with tears rolling down her cheeks.

“They pushed me through to the lounge and wanted to know if we had any firearms.

“They puked all over the place. The one guy, when he had me on the bed, puked right next to me.

“They were just so evil, I can’t tell you the hatred in these people’s faces – [it was] like they didn’t care.”

She said she was concentrating on her perpetrators’ features to help her identify them after the ordeal.

Amy pleaded with her rapists to show her that her husband was still alive in the bedroom.

The crime was done in just over an hour.

Once they had left, the Benoni police were phoned and arrived at the scene.

Amy said she was asked by the police to identify four men who were found sitting in a car near the scene of the crime.

This was while she was being treated by paramedics.

The distraught victim said she could not identify the men, and was asked by one of them, while she was in the ambulance, “you know me, where you know me from [sic]?”

Now, nine months after being raped, Amy still has more questions and few answers from the police.

“I have never heard a word from the police themselves,” she said.

“They have never once called me back to say this has happened or that has happened. All the phoning has come from me.”

She said she has read other articles in the City Times where women were raped, and feels that the same modus operandi was used, but police have not been interested in hearing her story.

“It’s terrible. It changed my whole life completely. I am a different person. It’s affected my marriage,” said Amy.

“I just can’t get over it. It’s (rape) something that happens to other people and you think ‘I’d rather die than have that happen to me’.

“I think it’s absolutely pathetic that a case like this, where I was raped by three men, like a gang rape, and they (police) have done absolutely nothing about it.

“I just think this does not say much for our justice system if that’s the way they treat a case like this.

“They have not done anything from their side, nothing. For all I know it’s (the docket) sitting at the bottom of a big load of files and it just gets pushed back under. For all I know that’s what is happening, because they have never phoned me.

“It’s changed me as a person. I’m petrified of going shopping, I’m petrified to go out on my own anymore, I don’t like driving anywhere.”

When asked how she was able to return to her home after being raped, she said: “It was hard, I was so scared to come back.”

“If I didn’t come back to my home then they (rapists) have won, you know what I am saying?

“I love my little home. The good thing would be to sell and go somewhere else, but where do you go where it is not happening anymore. It is happening everywhere.”

Benoni SAPS acting station commander Col Martin van Nieuwenhuizen confirmed to the City Times, on January 28, that police have not taken a statement from Amy.

“There was no statement, till today, taken from the woman,” said van Nieuwenhuizen.

“There is no reason why it was not taken from the woman, no reason (was given) in the dossier.”

He said he is busy with an internal investigation to determine why a statement was not taken.

Van Nieuwenhuizen assured the City Times that police will record a statement shortly.

“I have given an order for it to be taken.”

The station commander said the case has had three investigating officers and that it is against common practice for the police not to notify victims of crime on developments in a case.

Amy said she still wants to work with the police to put her assailants behind bars.

She hopes this will stop the rapists from targeting more women.

Amy* not her real name.