Family reeling after 5-year-old’s rape

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File photo

Published Aug 4, 2015

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Pretoria - The rape of a 5-year-old child from a Mamelodi West community was described on Monday as a travesty to humanity, and something that should not be allowed to happen to anyone.

Local community policing forum chairman Makhehla Simelane said the family of the child were devastated. “She is hardly a child; she is only a baby,” he said on Monday after the court appearance of the 38-year-old man accused of the crime.

The alleged incident took place last Thursday afternoon when the girl was at a tuckshop to buy bread.

“A community member found her stumbling and confused on the street, and when he enquired she indicated she had been sexually molested,” Simelane said.

The police were called in and arrested the foreign national whose shop the child went to. “Rape was confirmed and a suspect arrested. He has been charged,” police spokesman Captain Johannes Maheso said.

Family members, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the victim, said the child’s grandmother had sent her to the shop when the alleged incident took place.

“The shop is fairly near her home and the way there and back was one the child was familiar with,” the Pretoria News was told.

The relative said the shopkeeper, like all others operating in the community, was well trusted, so there was no reason for anyone to think twice when the need for a loaf of bread came up.

Even the slight delay in coming back from the shop was no cause for alarm. “Her grandmother didn’t really worry, because she would sometimes hop and skip there and back, or play a bit as small children do.”

The grandmother was shocked and distressed when members of community leadership structures, accompanied by the police arrived at their doorstep.

“The last thing she expected was to be told that the safety of the community had been shattered,” another relative said.

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Pretoria News

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