Pretoria - An innocent late night chat in the parking lot at Magnolia Dell ended with a Pretoria couple getting arrested for public indecency and the wife accused of being a prostitute.
Last year the Police Ministry admitted it was wrong to arrest the pair and detain them for a few hours and agreed to pay Charlene Stoker R50 000 in damages. Her former husband Emile Drotsky will receive R70 000.
They said they were extremely traumatised by the conduct of the police who accused them of having sex in the car. They were also humiliated when the police kept on referring to Stoker as magosha, slang for a prostitute.
This was in spite of the couple doing nothing but talking in the car. Both claimed damages against the police in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria.
Stoker earlier told the Pretoria News that she would never forget that night - June 25, 2008 - when they first went to dinner to discuss their marital problems. They later decided to park at Magnolia Dell to continue their conversation when the police suddenly tapped on the car window.
She said her husband got out of the car to hear what was going on, but the next moment he was pepper-sprayed in the face. “The police called for back-up and arrested us,” she said.
At the police station, her husband was put in a cell and she was dragged off to another. The couple tried to explain that they had done nothing wrong. Stoker also pleaded with the police to let them go, as their two small children were home alone with their nanny.
The police ignored them and Stoker’s father-in-law eventually arrived at the police station to vouch for the fact that the couple were married. Stoker earlier said the police believed she was a prostitute as she is coloured and her husband Is white.
Drotsky said in his police statement after the incident that when the police knocked on the car window, he got out of the car to explain that all was well and that he was a police officer. “An officer told me that we were conducting public indecency. I told him to go away and catch real criminals.”
He said the officer, who was accompanied by student officers, called for back-up. He was then pepper-sprayed and thrown into the police van. One of his biggest concerns was the fact that he had to leave his wife alone in the hands of the police, who accused her of being a prostitute. He was taken to the Sunnyside police station, where he again tried to explain his situation to the officers on duty.
Nobody wanted to listen to him, he said, and he was instead slapped, punched and kicked.
Drotsky said his wife was again called a prostitute in front of everyone at the police station. They were only allowed to leave after his father went to make a statement that they were married, he said.
The couple were told to report to court as they were facing a charge of public indecency. The State, however, declined to prosecute them.
Pretoria News