Mom of raped 8-month-old girl speaks

This Bonteheuwel teen mother's 8-month-old baby was raped. Picture: Genevieve Serra/Daily Voice

This Bonteheuwel teen mother's 8-month-old baby was raped. Picture: Genevieve Serra/Daily Voice

Published Jul 11, 2019

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Cape Town - The mother of an eight-month-old baby from Bonteheuwel, who was raped, says her child’s skull was also cracked in the sick attack.

Speaking out for the first time since the horrific incident on Saturday, 29 June, the young mom says she nearly died of shock when she saw her child’s injured genitals.

Meanwhile, police are busy testing for possible DNA samples of the suspect found on bloody towels at the scene.

The baby girl has been placed in a safe house by the Department of Social Development which the family says was done to keep the child from the public eye.

The baby’s 19-year-old mother, who cannot be identified, says she had been doing char work on the day of the attack, and had left her little girl in the care of her grandmother at 2pm.

The mother says another person had been at the house with the grandmother, who had “often been around the baby before”.

She says the woman had looked after the baby for a while, and later brought her to the grandmother claiming she had peed and needed a nappy change and had also fell and hurt herself.

“She threw the child on the bed and said to my mother, de, daar is jou kleinkind (there is your child),” the young mom tells Daily Voice.

“This person said the child fell and had peed and was wet. My mother asked her why she didn’t change the baby’s nappy.”

The mom says it was when the grandmother opened the dirty nappy to change it that she saw it was “filled with blood”.

“My baby began to cry and when my mother opened the nappy, there was blood from the front to the back. My mother asked her why there is blood inside the nappy and she said the baby fell. She said she did not know what happened and then left the house.”

The young mom’s aunt says the grandmother called her to have a look at the nappy.

“I was so shocked, we looked and saw daar was gekrap met die kind (that the child was hurt ),” the aunt says.

She says they immediately took the baby to Vangate Day Hospital.

She says two bloody towels that were possibly used to “wipe off hands or nails” were later found inside the house, which they handed to the police.

The baby was transferred to Karl Bremer Hospital for DNA testing.

The mom says her baby’s private parts were “swollen with dried blood”.

The aunt says social workers took the baby to protect her from strangers, not the family.

“The child was not taken away from the mother because she was negligent, she looks after her child. They took the baby to protect her because the story is on social media,” she says.

The mother adds that when her baby was taken away, they found her little skull had been injured.

“They sent my child to Tybergberg Hospital and said she has a cracked skull and we think it might be when she fell, according to the person who had her last,” she adds.

Police confirmed a charge of rape was opened.

Daily Voice

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