A 13-year-old girl who was allegedly raped by her stepfather in Mamelodi has been accused by her mother of lying about her boyfriend.
According to the girl’s 43-year-old aunt, who can’t be named to protect the identity of the minor, the alleged rape took place last year in March.
However, it was reported to the police in August.
The woman said the girl’s mother initially took the side of her boyfriend because she believed he was wrongly accused of something he did not do.
“We didn’t see eye to eye with the mother because she was taking the side of the boyfriend. But she subsequently came to her senses and came to apologise. She is able to visit us twice a week,” she said.
In the wake of the incident, the aunt added, the teenager’s mother accused her of lying about her boyfriend. The girl then sought help from her aunt, who took it upon herself to press rape charges against the alleged perpetrator.
The suspect was arrested and is still in custody. The case is now ready for trial after it was adjourned to June 21 at the Mamelodi Magistrate’s Court.
The aunt said the girl was initially emotionally broken and experienced nightmares because of the experience.
However, she was showing “a lot of improvement since she started attending counselling”.
“I also think a change of environment has played a huge role in her life because she used to live with her mother and now she is staying with us. She has changed and she is now behaving normally.
“She is able to play with other children,” the aunt added.
The girl is doing Grade 7 and she would like to be a doctor or a dentist one day, according to her aunt.
“I think the choice of her career is motivated by the fact that she would like to help people.”
The acting head of the Gauteng Department of Community Safety, Sipho Thanjekwayo, conducted an oversight visit to Mamelodi on Saturday.
He went to a local police station to monitor the police’s work in solving previous cases of rape incidents, among others.
It was revealed that sexual offence cases against women and children were on the rise in the Pretoria township, with about 50 opened between January and March this year.
Thanjekwayo, who was accompanied by a group of gender-based violence activists, also visited five families with children who had allegedly been raped.
Mamelodi East, where the young girl lived, was ranked among the top 30 gender-based violence hot spots nationally, and was in the top 10 hot spots in Gauteng, according to Thanjekwayo.
The police station in the east of the township recorded about 50 cases of sexual offences between January and March this year compared to 47 cases registered in the same period in the 2019/20 financial year. Thanjekwayo said the station was identified among the 40 in Gauteng that needed urgent assistance to improve their performance.
“We are sending in all kinds of teams in this area to make sure that the police are supported; the NGOs here are supported financially and otherwise to make sure that at least we improve the quality of policing in this station.”
However, he said that in the last quarter there had been “a bit of improvement” in terms of how the police station did its policing.
Alfred Tsebe, the station commissioner of Mamelodi East police station, was also part of the oversight visit. However, he declined to comment to the media.
Pretoria News