Durban - A South Coast teenager who was raped, beaten and stabbed seven times, and then still managed to walk about half a kilometre to her home, is recovering in hospital from her brutal injuries.
It was not the first time the 13-year-old orphan had become a victim of rape, her furious elder brother told the Daily News on Monday.
The child had been raped by a relative six years ago.
He said his sister had told him from her hospital bed that she was attacked on Wednesday night after spurning her assailant’s advances. The 22-year-old suspect, who has been arrested, had allegedly wanted her to be his girlfriend, the victim had told her brother.
The girl, who cannot be named to protect her identity, was accosted by the man as she was making her way home from a neighbour’s house in Dududu on the South Coast.
Stabbed in the face, neck, and body, she was taken to hospital in a critical condition, but her condition has since stabilised.
Her brother, who also cannot be named to protect her identity, said he was very angry about what had happened as it was not the first time she had been raped.
He said she was first raped in 2007 by a relative with whom his sister had been living. The rapes had continued since then, he added.
“We only found out last year. He was only in prison (custody) for two weeks before being released on bail and now this. It’s going to destroy her,” he said.
His sister had described the man who had allegedly attacked her last week and he had alerted the police, he said, explaining that he knew the suspect.
“She said that he had told her that he was raping her because she had refused to be his girlfriend. She knew him from the area, but did not know his name,” he said.
The sight of his younger sister’s badly injured body has left him traumatised, he said.
“He (the attacker) had stabbed her seven times and beat her up. She said that he had initially raped her and left, but he must have realised that she knew him and that is when he came back and beat her up (again) before stabbing her. It really has hurt me,” he said.
“I still cannot believe that after all her trauma she had still walked home to get help. It’s really hard to think that he had left such a young child to die after he had done wrong.”
The brother said that he had his doubts about the justice system, saying they had experienced it first hand when their relative, who had allegedly been raping his sister for years, was released on bail. The relative shared a house with his sister and their grandmother, he said.
“I am almost certain that this man will also get bail to go out and do the same thing to another child,” he said. “Prisons should be made hell so that criminals will think twice about committing crimes. However, prisons were no different to “boarding schools”, he said.
”Criminals are okay in prison, they don’t feel the punishment for their crimes and that’s why my sister and other children will always fall victims of crime. This needs to change, not only for my sister, but for the country. If you give bail to a rapist, what are you saying to the victim?”
Provincial police spokesman, Captain Thulani Zwane, said the suspect, who had been charged with rape and assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, had appeared in the Dududu Magistrate’s Court on Monday.
Daily News