One woman’s initial outrage over South Africa’s crime statistics has made way for fury about the Police’s perceived failure to deliver on the investigation of two respective criminal cases instituted after the alleged sexual molest of her teenage daughter nearly three years ago and her becoming a snatch theft victim almost three weeks back.
The Polokwane businesswoman, whose identity is withheld to protect her daughter, attested to repeatedly being informed that the case she made following the most recent incident of her handbag being snatched by one of three young suspects along a quiet city street on the last day of December last year could not be traced all along. That in spite of an arrest in the matter and her making a statement upon her discharge from a private hospital where she was treated for shock that same day, stressed the woman during an interview on Friday afternoon. Much to her surprise she was given a case number on Monday, she informed Polokwane Observer on Tuesday afternoon.
Yesterday (Wednesday) morning, after the Provincial Police’s communications division was approached for comment the previous afternoon, the woman indicated that she had just received a call from the commander of the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit to inform her that the case has been sent for a decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions and that feedback could be expected within a month or two.
She initially related that she was attacked for her handbag by a knife-wielding teenage thug – accompanied by two more gangsters in Oost Street at approximately 10:30 on 31 December – whom she immediately gave her bag when she noticed the weapon above her head.
Due to the shock she collapsed on the sidewalk and raised alarm. Three men from Durban passing by in a vehicle gave chase down Thabo Mbeki Street and returned with her bag some five minutes later. Although her tablet was stolen, the bag still contained her other belongings. With the assistance of the Community Policing Forum (CPF) and Police in Sectors 2 and 4 one of the three attackers was apprehended. Later on at the Police station she was informed that the 16-year-old confessed to hailing from Moletjie and being in Polokwane with the explicit aim of doing crime.
On the matter of alleged continuous sexual molest of her young daughter, she said the last telephonic contact she has had with the head of the relevant unit in Polokwane who took over the investigation after the reported arrest of the investigating officer by the Hawks was July last year. She had never been informed of any developments in the matter again despite numerous attempts to have the matter followed up, she claimed.
The case was registered in April 2014 after she discovered her then 10-year-old niece, whom she had fostered since the age of three, was a victim of sexual molest allegedly committed by a relative over a period of approximately seven years, she explained. The woman revisited the trauma that accompanied the shock when having to translate the young girl’s statement to a psychologist mid-2016. She was visibly shaken while relating a story of the teenager having been exposed to alleged acts of oral sex and shown pornography from the age of five or six. Most disturbing, she said, was the molester buying the young girl a vibrator at that age. The acts would have occurred at the house he shared with her one sister and other incidents in the bush in Bendor, she said. Only after the acts had been out in the open did the family understand the suspect’s rudeness towards them later on, she pointed out.
Immediately upon discovery of the gruesome acts she had a criminal case instituted, whereupon both of them have been going for weekly sessions with a psychologist. Whereas her daughter didn’t show deviant behaviour and used to excel at school and participate in sport before the alleged acts had been discovered, she now under-performs in tertiary and has lost interest in life, said the woman.
According to her no arrest had ever been made despite her further providing substantial evidence of possession of pornographic material to the Police and her daughter‘s version of events to a psychologist being considered credible. Another bone of contention she raised was the fact that they were advised by a social worker dealing with the case that the victim had to make her statement in Afrikaans in order for her to testify in her home language when the case was heard in court. However, the state prosecutor seemingly did not grasp what was said in the statement attached to the docket, the mother claimed.
She was outraged at crime in South Africa and now she had become part of the statistics, she exclaimed. She summarised her despair over the state of affairs by saying “I haven’t had this little hope for our country… also with my child’s case I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel”.
In providing comment, Provincial Police spokesperson Mamphaswa Seabi responded saying feedback was awaited after the docket in the sexual molest case had been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions for a decision and that a new investigating officer was assigned to the matter. With regards to the robbery case he said the docket had been handed to an investigating officer who was on leave and feedback on the matter could be expected soon. Seabi advised that if a complainant didn’t receive response on an investigation or had information that could assist in the investigation they should approach the investigating officer or immediate superior rather than wait until it was too late.
Story: YOLANDE NEL
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