child rape – praag.org

Mandela grandson charged with rape

President Nelson Mandela’s grandson remains in police custody after the rape case against him was postponed in the Johannesburg Magistrates Court on Monday.

The 24-year-old Mbuso Mandela is accused of raping a 15-year-old girl, and was arrested at the weekend after the victim opened the rape case against him.

It’s alleged the teenager went to the toilet at a pub in Greenside earlier this month when he grabbed her and raped her inside one of the cubicles.

The police has confirmed that he remains in custody and the case was remanded to Friday for a formal bail application.

In June, another one of Mandela’s grandsons, Mandla, received a suspended sentence in the Mthatha Magistrates Court.

The Mvezo chief was previously found guilty of assaulting a local teacher in a road rage incident in 2013.

Mandla had been convicted of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, an offence that could result in a jail term, but he has been granted leave to appeal his assault conviction.

Fear of rape force girls to bunk school

Girl pupils in farming communities bunk school not out of choice but out of fear of being robbed, assaulted and raped on their way to and from school, a survey has revealed.

They live far from their schools and have to walk long distances either because they do not qualify for the government’s schools transport scheme or the service in their area is unreliable.

Of the 320 pupils in the Stellenbosch, Wellington, Grabouw and Wolseley farming areas who took part in the study, 48 percent have been robbed on their way to school and 37 percent have been exposed to sexual assault.

These statistics were revealed last week in a Women on Farms Project (WFP) study.

The WFP said its survey revealed many rural youngsters spent over an hour walking to school in the mornings and another hour walking back home in often harsh weather conditions.

Karen Roos, WFP’s women’s health and empowerment programme co-ordinator, said “girls have been raped and some girls encounter men exposing their genitals or asking them for sex”.

The study also revealed transport schemes plagued with problems, including overloaded buses, buses in a poor state of repair and an unreliable bus service which often results in pupils reaching school after classes have started.

Source: Weekend Argus

Child-rape acquittal in Sweden causes social media frenzy

A Swedish girl who says she was raped by a 27-year-old man when she was just 13 has lost her appeal against his acquittal after a court ruled that the man could not have known she was under age because of her “well-developed” body.

News of the court judgments sent Sweden’s social media into a frenzy on Tuesday, with Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet’s version of the story the second most read news article in the country according to social news site socialanyheter.se.

The girl – who has not been named in the Swedish media – said she was raped while on the run from her foster home. She said she had travelled to Västerås, just outside Stockholm, but did not have any money, a mobile phone or a place to stay when she got talking to the older man at a playground near his home.

According to her police statements, he invited her in for a drink after explaining that she was hungry and thirsty and police secured evidence that the pair later had sex.

The man initially denied that the girl had been in his home but later admitted it after police found some of his sperm on her underwear.

Under Swedish law, having intercourse with someone under the age of 15 is classified as ‘child rape’, but both Västmanland District Court and Sweden’s Court of Appeal have now thrown out the girl’s case, because the legislation also states that a defendant must “know” or have “reasonable grounds to believe” that the child is under age.

After viewing video evidence including the girl’s interview with police, both courts decided that the 13-year-old’s body was so “well-developed” that the suspect could not have known that she was under the legal age for having sex in Sweden.

The girl’s lawyer Göran Landerdahl told the TT news agency that he planned to take the case to Sweden’s Supreme Court and hoped to set a precedent for future similar claims.

“Judges read newspapers too, so perhaps someone will realize that there are irregularities in this case,” he said.

Speaking to Sweden’s Aftonbladet newspaper, he added that anyone who had sex with someone who looked “borderline 15 years old” without checking their age, should be called to account.

However, legal expert Madeleine Leijonhufvud believes that the chances that the case will be accepted by the Supreme Court are slim.

“The Supreme Court has been very restrictive when it comes to applying legal sexual abuse clauses to cases involving young teenagers,” she told TT, adding that “less serious crime classifications” than “child rape” had often ended up being used in other similar cases.

HIV-teacher charged with murder after raping children

A Johannesburg primary school teacher has been charged with attempted murder after the HIV-positive man allegedly raped two schoolboys.

The 44-year-old black teacher, who worked at Soweto’s Sediba-Thuto Primary school until he was fired in February, briefly appeared at the Protea Magistrate’s Court yesterday (16-7-14), where he is also facing two charges of rape.

The charges relate to his alleged rape of two boys, aged nine and 10, from the school, while the prosecution has not ruled out that other alleged victims may still come forward.

The teacher, who was dismissed by the Gauteng Department of Education in November for absconding from work, was initially charged with raping the older boy, but yesterday prosecutor Carina Coetzee added another rape charge after a 9-year-old boy came forward.

According to the charge sheet, the teacher also stands accused of “unlawfully and intentionally” attempting to kill the older boy by “exposing him to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection”. Coetzee said this was because the teacher was aware of his HIV status at the time of the alleged rape. She added that he may face another charge of attempted murder once the state ascertains if he knew of his status at the time of the alleged incident involving the younger child.

Yesterday, magistrate Audrey Mpofu gave other potential victims a chance to come forward. The prosecution has been given until the end of August to bring any additional charges against the teacher, with the trial set to start in October.

Two relatives arrested for child rape

Two black men, aged 51 and 61, have been arrested in Koster for allegedly raping a 10-year-old relative, North West police confirmed on Sunday.

“The incident happened between 3 and 20 June 2014, at Senthumule, Koster,” said Colonel Sabata Mokgwabone.

“The child’s guardian became concerned when she realised that the child was not walking properly. The child was taken to the hospital where it was discovered that she was raped.”

The child informed the guardian that she had been raped by her two relatives.

They were arrested on Saturday and were expected to appear in the Koster Magistrate’s Court on Monday, Mokgwabone said.

Gardener guilty of raping 3-year-old

A former gardener at the Lesedi Day Care Centre in Floors was on Thursday found guilty of sexually assaulting a 3-year-old girl in the centre’s bathroom.

Cedric Golding, 31, a coloured man on Thursday appeared in the Kimberley Magistrate’s Court’s sexual offences courtroom where magistrate, Jesse Clarke, explained his verdict.

Golding was initially charged with two counts of rape following the incident in September 2011. He pleaded not guilty.

The young victim testified during the trial that Golding, who worked as a gardener at the centre, took her from the playground to the centre’s bathroom, where he touched her vagina and anus, while the teachers “were busy inside”.

She also illustrated, with the aid of anatomically-correct dolls, what exactly happened.

The child’s mother also testified that the normally vibrant child had come home from the centre one afternoon and was “not her usual self”.

Source: IOL

Port Elizabeth black man convicted of raping 6-year old

A 33-year-old man was convicted of rape by the Port Elizabeth High Court on Wednesday, said Eastern Cape police.

Xolisile Tose would be sentenced on Thursday, said Warrant Officer Thembi Gwe.

He raped a six-year-old girl three years ago after luring her to his home.

“He took her to his place and repeatedly raped her and threatened to kill her if she told anyone,” said Gwe.

He released her the next day.

Community members found the girl on the street, wearing a bloodstained sweater.

“The suspect was later arrested and charged with rape,” said Gwe.

He has been in police custody since his arrest over two years ago after the court denied him bail.

Burned rape victim dies

A girl, who survived being raped and set alight in January, has died.

The 9-year-old Lihle Hlanjwa suffered extensive burns, gave a statement to the police about two weeks ago in hospital.

She was raped and set alight on January 18, but, after being found in bush along the R300 the next day, managed to tell residents she recognised the man who had raped her and that he had laughed as he set her alight.

Lihle, also known to family and friends as Queenie, died at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital early on Tuesday.

A community representative, Pieter Presence, said Hlanjwa father had virtually lived at the hospital since his daughter was admitted there.

Hlanjwa’s shack had even been vandalised and burgled while he was away, Presence added.

On Tuesday, police spokesman Andre Traut said the 27-year-old suspect, arrested the day after Lihle was attacked, now faced a rape and murder charge, instead of an attempted murder charge.

The suspect, Wanda Oliphant, is expected to appear in the Bellville Magistrate’s Court again next week.

Priscilla Mcentee, chairwoman of Delft Suburban, a community neighbourhood programme, said: “I feel like it’s my own daughter that has passed away.”

Mcentee was instrumental in Oliphant’s arrest. The morning that Lihle was found, she had seen a man, with a burnt T-shirt and blood on his pants, behaving suspiciously.

She called for back-up and together with neighbourhood watch members kept the man in a member’s garage.

The attack on Lihle was one of at least three against children in Delft South in less than a month.

A week before the incident, a 6-year-old girl was raped in a communal toilet in the area.

Three weeks after Lihle was raped and set alight, 11-year-old Siphokuhle Flephu was murdered and allegedly raped.

School mum on pre-school rape

A Grade R girl, 5, is alleged to have been raped by three Grade 2 boys on the grounds of a Mitchells Plain school.

It happened on March 4, but the school failed to notify the girl’s parents. Only during a conversation with her teacher on March 13 did the parents learn their child had allegedly been raped.

The girl’s father, who is not being identified in order to protect his daughter’s identity, said the school had “failed in its duties”.

He said the police opened a case and took the family to a social worker and to GF Jooste Hospital the next day.

“After that session (with a doctor) she and my wife came out crying. My daughter was crying because of an injection she had received. My wife was crying because the results were positive in terms of penetration.”

The family await the results of HIV and other tests.

The girl’s father says she is severely traumatised and afraid to return to class.

The alleged incident happened while the girl was waiting for her transport home after school. Her father said she usually waited in an office but later found out that on that day she had been “chased out” by a staff member. He said he later learnt his daughter had been approached by the three boys who ordered her to hold on to a tree.

“They ordered her to take off her underwear. She didn’t want to. They forced her to do it and did what they wanted to do.”

He said the boys told her they were going to kill her if she reported them, but she told a teacher the next day. The girl didn’t tell her parents.

The father said that on March 6 he received a phone call from the school and was told that there were problems with his daughter’s transport. They wanted to know if he could come to the school the next day.

He said the next morning he received another call from the school who asked if he was still coming “because the parents were there” so he assumed it was a general parents’ meeting and that it would be finished by the time he arrived there.

He later found out the “parents” were the alleged perpetrators’ parents.

“Nobody told me that my daughter had been raped. I would have left everything I was doing and gone to the school.”

The father said that on Thursday he saw her class teacher outside he asked about his daughter’s progress in class.

“The teacher said she was okay. Then she said: ‘I thought you had come here because of the rape’. We asked her what she meant.”

The parents demanded to see the principal immediately. They said he told them he was under the impression they had been informed.

Source: IOL

Three-year-old raped while parents party

A black couple are being investigated for child neglect after their three-year-old daughter was raped while they were out at a party.

The child was left alone with her five-year-old sister in Langrug, Franschhoek on February 15 when the attack occurred.

The children’s mother, 26, said she had first taken both kids with her to the party.

“I went to a party at around 7pm and when I got there, the children were sleeping and I laid them on the bed where I made sure to keep an eye on them,” she said.

“But their father arrived later on in the night, drunk and took them and he said he wanted his children to sleep at home.

“When he got here, he put them on the bed and left them there, but did not lock the house or the gate outside.

“He came back to the party, stayed for a few hours and then went back home without me.

The mom said she realised her daughter had been raped on Sunday morning.

“I inspected her and saw that her pants and panties were full of blood.

“I asked her what happened and she told me who hurt her.

“He is a family friend, the children’s father’s old friend from back in the Eastern Cape, he used to come here all the time.

Police spokesman Captain FC van Wyk said the suspect was arrested on Sunday and appeared in court.

“A case of child neglect has been opened and will be investigated against both parents of the victim,” he said

The three-year-old spent two days at the Tygerberg Hospital where she got stitches in her vagina and anus to repair the tearing after the brutal attack.

Source: IOL

Two more Cape children raped

Police are hunting for the man who raped an 11-year-old boy in a derelict building in Bonteheuwel.

This horrific attack took place little more than a week after the violent attack on a 9-year-old Delft girl who was raped, doused in petrol and set alight.

In Bonteheuwel, on Sunday at about 7.45pm, the boy was walking along Bonteheuwel Avenue, when a man called him, said police spokesman Captain FC van Wyk.

The man led the boy into a derelict building which had been gutted in a fire. Here, the man, apparently known to the people in the area as “Franky”, raped the boy.

Police have also issued an identikit of a suspect in another Delft child rape which occurred earlier this month – on January 12 a 6-year-old girl was raped in a communal toilet.

Police said the rapist is between the ages of 45 and 50. He is 1.65m tall and has a dark complexion.

Delft police have also issued an identikit of a suspect in a rape that occurred in August last year. In that incident, a 24-year-old woman was forced at knife point into the bushes at the R300 and N2 intersection, and raped.

Reacting to these latest reports of child rape, MEC of Social Development Albert Fritz said that he was “outraged”.

Pastor and father arrested for rape in separate incidents

A 70-year-old man, a Pastor in one of the local churches in Siyabuswa, was arrested today, 17 January 2014, for allegedly raping a 17-year-old girl.

Information at police disposal revealed that the girl was taken to the pastor by his brother for prayers as she was not feeling well yesterday. The pastor asked her brother to leave her and collect her later. The suspect instructed the girl to undress so she could get into a “sauna” (isifutho). In the process, the suspect began to touch her and told the girl that anything that happens within the premises must not be told to anyone. The suspect then forcefully raped the girl.

The incident was reported to the police and the suspect was nabbed facing a charge of rape.

On a separate incident, a 55-year-old man from Embalenhle has been arrested yesterday for allegedly raping his biological daughter, who is now 32-years-old, on several occasions during 1997 and 1999.

The incident occurred in January 1997 while the victim was 16-years-old at the time, and residing at Bushbuckridge with her granny. It is alleged that the suspect went into the woman’s (his daughter) room while she was asleep during the night, covered her mouth, forcefully undressed and raped her. He continued to rape her until in 1999 when she became pregnant.

News broke out after they (woman and the father) had a quarrel recently and her mother discovered that her daughter had been abused, she then reported the matter to the police. The suspect was apprehended yesterday and escorted to Bushbuckridge where the incident took place for further investigation.

The suspects, on both incidents, will appear before the Mdutjane in Siyabuswa and Bushbuckridge Magistrates’ Courts respectively, on Monday, 20 January 2014.

The Provincial Commissioner of Mpumalanga has described the two incidents as very unfortunate and immoral as the suspects are supposed to be the guardian of these victims, instead they opted to be something else.

Father who raped 11-year old daughter sentenced to 39 years

A 44-year-old father from the Richards Bay area has been convicted and sentenced to a total of 39 years imprisonment by the Richards Bay Regional Court on 20 December 2013, after he was found guilty of raping his 11-year-old daughter in the area.

The KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Commissioner, Lieutenant General Mmamonnye Ngobeni welcomed the conviction and sentence of this father. “The ruthless and barbaric attack of children by criminals even if they are fathers will not be tolerated in our society. The sentence is preceded by intensive and diligent investigation by capable officers from Empangeni FCS Unit. Our endeavours to effectively investigate reported crimes instills hope in victims of crime and sends out a clear message to criminals that we will trace, arrest and successfully prosecute them,” concluded Lieutenant General Ngobeni.

From 1999 to 2001, the victim who was 11-year-old at that time, was at home with her father when the father sexually assaulted her and eventually raped her in separate incidents. She was also assaulted and threatened to be killed during 2001. In August 2001 a case of rape was opened at Richards Bay police station and through investigation the accused was immediately arrested and charged with rape.

I is not known why the case took 12 years to wind its way through the courts.

Three caught for raping, stabbing three-year-old

Police arrested three black male suspects after a three-year-old girl escaped death when a resident found her crying hours after she was allegedly raped and stabbed in Thaba Nchu.

The little girl, found rape and abandoned at an old industrial site in Thaba Nchu, was apparently attacked by three teenagers aged between 15 and 18.

Police said it is alleged that the victim was raped before the suspects stabbed her several times all over her little body. Police could not confirm the number of times the victim was stabbed.

According to the information given to police, it is alleged that on Sunday a woman residing in Sakanyoka township left the three year old with an older sibling when she went to a tavern.

“It is alleged that three suspects came in the house and took the victim to an old industrial area in Thaba Nchu, where they started to exchange raping her, before they stabbed her several wounds and left her, thinking that she was dead,” said police spokesperson, Consolation Mokoale.

“At about 10:00 in the morning a community member heard a child crying from the building and went to investigate. She found the girl in a pool of blood,” said Mokoale in a statement on Tuesday.

She said police and paramedics were called and the girl was found alive but in a critical condition.

“She was taken to Pelonomi medi-clinic for treatment. Police received a tip off and three suspects aged between 15 and 18 were arrested for kidnapping, attempted murder and rape,” Mokoale said.

They will appear before Selosesha Magistrate Court on Wednesday.