SUBMISSION TO THE PARLIAMENTARY PUBLIC HEARING ON SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN 12 MARCH 2002

Presented by Clifford Bestall of Shadow Pictures cc.

Chairperson, Honourable Members, thank you for this opportunity.

My colleague Pearlie Joubert and I are currently making a documentary film on baby rape and child abuse in South Africa. The film has been commissioned by the BBC current affairs programme Correspondent for broadcast in that country. What is included below does not represent the content of the film we are making.

We cannot claim to be experts on the subject of child abuse but feel that it is important to make a submission to this hearing as concerned South Africans who have now gained some insight on the subject because of our work. Unfortunately our film will not have many answers as to how to reduce sexual abuse of children in this country. It will not have many redemptive elements that suggest that we are now emerging into the light at the end of a long dark tunnel. I wish it could be otherwise but there is not really a bright side to this story.

Our film mainly follows the investigation in the Upington rape of Baby Tsepang. The BBC was drawn to the idea when it was erroneously reported that the baby had been gang raped by 6 men. As we understand it, it was the MEC of Health in the Northern Cape who declared it was gang rape and not the police. Ironically it was this same MEC who refused to renew the contract of a medical doctor who broke rank with policy in the Northern Cape and administered an anti-retroviral to Baby Tsepang. But thanks to the MEC, Baby Tsepang has become an icon of the dire state of our children in much the same way that Hector Peterson became an icon of the struggle against apartheid.

Incidentally baby rape did not start with Baby Tsepang and sadly has not ended there either. We know of 7 other babies who have been raped since October 2001.

Our investigation and experience in filming sequences regarding the hunt for the perpetrator in this and another case involving the rape of a baby in Ravensmead in Cape Town, convinced us that the Child Protection Units in both Upington and Cape Town are made up of incredibly dedicated individuals battling to do a job with little human and logistical resources.

On average the members of the CPU take home R4800 a month with a capped additional income of R2800 a year for overtime, which can amount to 900 hours. They work incredibly long hours. Often their days start at 3 am in the morning. On a number of occasions we were called in the early hours of the morning to accompany members of the Cape Town unit to make arrests.

Each member of the Cape Town unit handles 70 to 90 cases. This is an impossible work load. Experts reckon that only 15 % of all child rapes are reported – imagine the workload if this percentage was higher.
Each case requires investigation, sensitive interviewing of children, assessment as to whether they are ready for court and then the actual court appearances. It is small wonder that the unit has lost 28 members over the last 6 years because of stress.

The rewards of a CPU member are few. There is only a 7 percent conviction rate of the estimated 15 percent of all rapes that are reported. The government is failing our children through our legal system and allocation of resources to the CPU. Can there be a higher priority in any country than the protection of children?

Allow me to quote a filmed interview with a CPU member about the process of trying to administer justice in the event of a child being raped:

"The child has to testify in extreme detail about a very unhappy event in her life on the day which she doesn’t ever want to be reminded of or would ever want to relive again. A day, which in every respect was not a special day, and in sequence and in extreme detail failing which she could possibly, be portrayed as an untrustworthy or an incompetent witness. Children in our experience don’t forget what was done to them as far as their bodies are concerned but they don’t remember the date or the time of the day or the clothing of the perpetrator, it’s not important to them. Unfortunately it still happens that defence attorneys can confuse children by tripping them up on irrelevant details and then portraying those irregularities as so significant that question marks arise about their competency to remember."

In other countries children are interviewed once only in a compassionate environment and video material of the interview is used as evidence in court. Here the victim will have to tell her story to the investigating officer; then to a social worker; then to the state prosecutor and then repeat it all again in court under cross examination. Often a scarred and scared child will have to tell his or her story up to 7 times.

We would strongly urge that the CPU is treated as the most important unit of the SA Police Services and not become a dumping ground for some rogue policemen. Recently a Cape Town policeman on a charge of fraud was moved to the CPU. Some senior officer considered that although he couldn’t be trusted with property he could however be trusted to deal with children.

In our search for causes as to why children and babies are raped in this country we have come up with little but it could be useful to this hearing if I mentioned a few of them:

Firstly we found that child rape and abuse is not confined to any racial group.

We did find that there is evidence that given the confusion regarding the cause and cure of Aids, traditional healers or Sangoma’s have a great influence in certain communities. Incidentally this includes both the black and coloured communities where we filmed. We interviewed a Sangoma practicing in Cape Town who admitted that the traditional view is that sex with a virgin or an old woman who has not been sexually active for a long time can purify. To quote the Head of Paediatrics at Cape Town’s Red Cross Hospital:

"Government policy precludes the free availability of anti-retroviral drugs to people with the disease and as a result of that people in a desperate situation seek alternative ways of curing themselves. It’s a reality that certain Witch Doctors or Sangomas spread the idea that if you have sex with a virgin that you can cure yourself from Aids."

The American psychologist Lloyd deMause in his paper A HISTORY OF CHILD ABUSE writes that the notion of sex with virgins as cure for disease has been around for a long time. He writes that even as recent as the late 19th Century a child rapist would be released from the Old Bailey in London if he could prove that he was suffering form a venereal disease.

Surely the government through its information services, through it’s health department can galvanise radio and television to disabuse people of the Aids cure myth. Given that parliament has already been notified that 1 in 4 individuals in South Africa believe the myth to be true, and given the rates of Aids infection this should be treated as an absolute priority. Something can and should be done!

We have found that a more difficult problem to correct is the poverty that places young children into the care of jobless men in poor communities. This and the extensive abuse of drugs and alcohol seem to exacerbate the problem of child rape. But as pointed out earlier, child rape is not restricted to any one racial group.

Somehow there’s a signal that is being transmitted to every potential child rapist in this country to follow their fantasies, to rape the innocent because they can get away with it.

We feel that our government must demonstrate that it values our children through a change in its Aids policy; through financial commitment to the Child Protection Units; through a rethink of legislation regarding child rape.

It can be shown that where presidents have lead the campaign against Aids, as has happened in Uganda and Kenya, the infection rates have dropped. We need our President to go on television and radio and to tell the nation that HIV/AIDS cannot be healed through sex with virgins. We need action, not words that confuse. It’s the least he can do for our children

In conclusion: DeMause describes how historically even the smallest social support of women has had significant impact on promoting good parenting and reducing child abuse. He concludes that breaking the cycle of violence – of abused children become abusing parents – is essential to address the problem. Thank you.