According to Kate Wilkinson, who researched the validity of this statement on behalf of Africa Check (a non-profit fact-checking organisation), the data of such a claim, which has been doing the rounds since 2009, is flawed.
Africa Check has released this latest report on this matter:
This recurring claim has been repeated at least three times in the past month – at a high-level international crime conference in Cape Town, in an opinion piece on a leading news website and in a speech by a senior Western Cape politician.
It has also been repeated over the years by the South African Medical Research Council.
But is the claim correct? What evidence is there to support it?
The 2009 report that is so often cited as the source of the claim was commissioned by Helping Hand, a charity wing of the Afrikaner civil rights organisation Solidarity.
Titled “Kindermishandeling – Die skandvlek van ons samelewing” (Child abuse – the scourge of our society), it is no longer available on their websites, but can still be found on the Internet Archive. The report was written to raise awareness and provide information about child abuse.
It stated: “The South African National Youth Victimisation Survey of 2005 found that only 11.3 per cent of child rapes are reported to the (South African Police Service). This means that if 60 child rapes are reported every day, in reality 531 cases take place. That is one child who is raped every three minutes!”
So are 60 child rape cases reported per day in South Africa?
The Helping Hand report referred to the police’s crime statistics for April to December 2007, which showed that 16 068 rapes involving children had been reported in that time – therefore, around 60 child rape cases per day.
But, the following year, the police discovered a serious flaw in the data. According to their 2008/9 annual report, the 16 068 figure included rape victims who were older than 18 but younger than 19. This means the number of child rape cases on which Helping Hand based their claim on included an unknown number of cases where the victims were not minors.
Since 2008, the police have not reported the number of child rape cases separately in their annual report. Instead, incidents of child rape are lumped together under the sexual offences category that includes rape and sexual assault of all genders and ages, prostitution and acts such as flashing.
So how many children are raped every day in South Africa?
After a month of persistent requests, the police finally provided disaggregated data – 2012/13 (20 702) and 2013/14 (18 524).
This shows that reported child rapes decreased from around 57 cases per day in 2012/13 to almost 51 in 2013/14. But as rape is notoriously under-reported, a decrease in reported rapes is not necessarily a sign that sexual violence is decreasing or that police interventions are effective.
Researchers carry out victimisation surveys to more accurately estimate the real prevalence of crime. They do so by interviewing a representative sample of people – of a certain region, gender or age, or a whole country – about their experience of crime.
The victimisation study that Helping Hand used for the statement “if 60 child rapes are reported every day, in reality 531 cases take place” was carried out by the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention in 2005.
Around 4 400 respondents between the ages of 12 and 22 were asked if they had been victims of crimes – ranging from theft and assault to robbery, house breaking, sexual assault and car-hijacking.
According to this survey, only 11.3 per cent of sexual assaults were reported to the police.
The Helping Hand report interpreted this result as the rate at which child rape cases are reported. But the assumption was wrong, because the question did not distinguish between rape and a broad range of sexual crimes.
Unfortunately, there are no victimisation studies about child rape available in South Africa at present, the director of the Medical Research Council’s gender and health research unit, Rachel Jewkes, told Africa Check.
Patrick Burton, executive director at Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention and co-author of the 2005 National Youth Victimisation Survey, said: “We don’t have nationally representative data on (the underreporting of child rape). We just don’t have the data for incidences, prevalence or ages. There aren’t any statistics out there that show that a child is raped every three minutes.”
According to Burton, the centre and the University of Cape Town are undertaking a national study of child and adolescent abuse in South Africa and hope to release the findings in March next year.
“The results, together with police statistics, could allow us to form a more accurate picture. But then the police must also break down the reported cases of child rapes by ages and areas,” says the manager of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) crime and justice information hub, Lizette Lancaster.
Taking all of this into account, the statistic that a child is raped every three minutes in South Africa is based on flawed data and calculations.
The findings of a new comprehensive study – due early next year – will hopefully shed more light on the extent of this terrible crime.
