VIDEO: Daylene Solomons regains her strength after devastating ordeal
“They force you to take mandrax and crystal meth, they threaten your life and you see no way out of it.”
Our community has been involved in the fight against drugs for quite some time now with many opening non-profit organisations such as rehabilitation centres, drug awareness programmes and so forth however it seems as though a large amount of the youth still experiment with these substances to get a feel of it.
Daylene Solomons who is now forty years of age was one who experimented with drugs when she was a teenager. At the age of 16 Solomons experimented with Cat (Methcathinone). According to Solomons, it was just an experience thing and she didn’t plan on getting addicted to it. At sixteen, Solomons says she was gang-raped.
“I couldn’t explain to anybody because it was a thing of ‘you asked for it’, ‘why were you in the street?’ My parents were also very strict so I didn’t say anything because they didn’t know that I experimented with drugs,” she said.
Years went by and in 2015 Solomons explained that she was abducted for three days by drug dealers who took her to a house where they sold drugs from.
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The man who abducted her rapped her and told her that she must cooperate and take whatever drugs they give to her. Solomon said that she was then escorted to another drug house.
“They force you to take mandrax and crystal meth, they threaten your life and you see no way out of it. They test the drugs on you so that they can see the effects before selling it.
“When we got to the other house, the men there had their faces closed so I couldn’t see who they were. They then sold me to other guys, I think they were from Lenasia,” explained Solomons.
Solomon’s was used for sex by different men and was moved to different properties. When they brought her back to Klipspruit she managed to escape and at the time she lived in Eldorado Park so she could run home.
“When I got there, I just saw all these men in my house. They turned my house into a lolly lounge. I just walked in and my boyfriend was there too, I just said ‘not now’ to him and went to sleep. People were smoking drugs and the house was so full.
“I just pretended like I was not afraid, I was penetrated so much over the three days, I could barely walk so I knew I would have never made it if I went straight to the police station. So, I slept,” said Solomons.
The next day Solomons went to the Kliptown Police Station to open cases. The provincial police also got involved and Solomons stated that she was sent to Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital for check-ups.
Solomons lived in that house for a few months with it still being a lolly lounge, she said that she waited for the police to come as they said they will but they did not do so.
Still addicted to drugs, Solomons moved to Riverlea but explained that it wasn’t easy because people just saw her as a ‘druggie’ and a liar because they did not believe her story.
After battling with her family and residents from the community, Solomons said that she became angry with everyone around her because people were not understanding and she was even beaten by a few residents. Solomons then joined the Helping Hands Counselling and Sewing Programmes and went for rehabilitation sessions at the hospital.
All of these programmes helped with Solomons recovery. Solomons is unfortunately not able to say if the perpetrators who abducted and raped her were arrested because she’s not sure what happened with the case.
She is now free from drugs for about two years and completed multiple skill development courses. Solomons is now working on completing her drug counselling course and plans on helping drug addicts with rehabilitation. Her main focus will, however, be on girls who are stuck at lolly lounges since she has the experience of what happens there.
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