Beaten girl’s tragic life

Teddy bears have been placed on the security gate of a home in Havenside, where a toddler was found dead. The community held a memorial service for the child.

Teddy bears have been placed on the security gate of a home in Havenside, where a toddler was found dead. The community held a memorial service for the child.

Published Nov 24, 2014

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Durban - The little child who was found beaten to death at her Chatsworth home on Thursday, had been rescued on Durban’s beachfront when she was just 6 weeks old after allegedly being sold to a man for R100, according to police.

The Daily News has established that metro police officers had rescued her as an infant on June 9, 2011, at North Beach.

The girl, whose father is in prison in Cape Town, was living with her grandmother in Havenside, Chatsworth, when she died. She had been placed there by Child Welfare social workers acting in terms of a court order.

On Thursday, police were called to the home where they removed her battered body. She had apparently suffered several injuries to her body including cigarette burns, raising questions about whether Child Welfare had failed the toddler.

But Child Welfare has denied the allegation and said regular visits had been undertaken over the past three years.

They insisted there had been no signs of abuse during those visits, but admitted they were hampered by a serious shortage of social workers swamped by thousands of cases in Chatsworth alone.

Her 55-year-old grandmother and 31-year-old mother have been taken into police custody pending the results of the post-mortem, and her two siblings have been removed from the home and are staying with a relative. The children’s paternal grandparents arrived from their home in Cape Town on Sunday.

A metro police officer who helped rescue the little girl three years ago said she was heartbroken that the child had been found murdered.

“It broke us back then when we found her on the beach. She was this tiny little girl, six weeks old with the most beautiful eyes. When we took her in there were so many people who wanted to adopt her,” said the policewoman, who cannot be named as she is not authorised to speak on the case.

“Somehow she fell through the cracks and ended up back with the mother and grandmother.”

Chatsworth Child Welfare president, Logan Naidu, said social workers had regularly visited the family and had picked up no signs of abuse.

He said in 2011 after the courts had placed the child with the grandmother, several visits had been made.

In February, the court order had expired for temporary placement of the girl and social workers had to get a district surgeon to examine her for them to make the grandmother her legal guardian.

“The district surgeon checked her physically and did not find anything,” Naidu said.

He said the last visit from social workers was four months ago.

“When we did our last supervision we didn’t find anything (physical abuse).”

Naidu said their child welfare centre had 10 social workers dealing with about 5 000 children a year, explaining that the shortage of resources was one of the issues they were faced with in their need for constant supervision. He said they needed 30 more social workers.

“I can assure you we are doing our best at this point in time, and from our side we have already done an investigation. The social worker (dealing with the child) has been asked to give a full written report on the issue. We have worked with him for a while.”

Naidu said while community anger over the death of the child was justified they should not blame child welfare.

Asked if they would do anything differently in the light of the incident, Naidu said: “We do everything by the book. Over the period of time there were no sign of abuse.

“We have reports of our supervisions in our offices to prove this. The only issue is resources. We are responsible for the child and other siblings but that doesn’t mean we are doing visits every day or every week.”

Ncumisa Fandesi, spokeswoman for Social Development MEC Weziwe Thusi, said on Sunday that they were aware of the murder.

“Our social workers are working with the police. We are investigating this and all these allegations would be included in a report from our social workers.”

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