South Africa 'rape video' suspects in court

Sex assualt video forces South Africa to confront rape crisis

JOHANNESBURG — A ten minute video of a girl being gang raped that went viral in South Africa is forcing the country to confront the horrors of its rape crisis. There were angry scenes outside a South African court where eight suspects appeared for the first time in connection with an alleged gang rape.

The seven suspects accused of gang raping a 17-year-old Soweto girl appear at the Roodepoort Regional Court, on April 19, 2012.

“A nation’s shame,” was the banner headline in a rare front-page editorial in The Star newspaper.

“We have been united as a nation in our horror and revulsion,” read the editorial. “The knowledge that this latest atrocity was filmed and then passed digitally from one to another before anyone had the common decency to speak out shames us all even further.”

Prosecutors said Thursday they could seek life in prison for the rape of the teenage girl. The 17-year-old Soweto girl will undergo a psychiatric evaluation, said prosecutions spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga, amid reports that she had the mental capacity of a four-year-old.

The cabinet on Thursday condemned the attack, calling on “the law enforcement to ensure that the full might of the law is implemented”.

‘How did we, as a people, raise monsters who find a joke in this repugnant act’

The case has caused outrage after a video showing the suspects laughing during the alleged rape of a 17-year-old girl went viral. Prosecutors want a psychiatric evaluation of the victim who is said to have the mental age of a five year old.

The case has been postponed until 25 April to allow further investigations.

The preliminary hearing was held behind closed doors because some of the suspects, who have been charged with rape and kidnap, are under-age.

A spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority told South Africa's eNews television that if the girl is found to be mentally unstable, it would be classified as a serious offence punishable by possible life imprisonment.

The suspects will also be facing charges of creating and possessing child pornography - after a video taken of the alleged gang rape was widely circulated on mobile phones and the internet.

'You are forcing me'

A group of women demonstrated outside the Johannesburg courtroom when the eight people - including minors - arrived under heavy guard. Dressed in the yellow, black and green colours of the ruling African National Congress Party, they sang anti-apartheid struggle song - holding posters that read "let them rot in jail" and "done with rapists", the South African Press Association reported.

"If you are a man you must use your brain to think, not your trouser[s]," Eyewitness news quotes Faith Mazibuko, Gauteng's community safety minister, telling the small crowd.

The video allegedly shows the suspects - the youngest of whom is 14 - laughing and joking during the alleged rape in the township of Soweto.

The girl went missing in March and her whereabouts were unknown until reporters from South Africa's Daily Sun newspaper brought the video to the attention of the police.

The paper reports that the video lasts just more than 10 minutes and the girl can be heard shouting: "You are forcing me, you are forcing me".

The video went viral on Wednesday, and was one of the main topics trending on social networking site Twitter.

'Delete footage'

The girl was found by police on Wednesday - and seven rape suspects were arrested in Soweto on Tuesday after they were matched to the video recording, the South African Press Association reports. The man in whose home the girl was found has also been arrested and charged with kidnap.

Authorities have warned anyone who has received a copy of the video that they should delete it or risk being charged under the country's sexual offences laws.

Lulu Xingwana, South Africa's minister for women and children, issued a statement saying: "In addition to the painful ordeal of rape the young woman was forced to endure, she is now subjected to a second assault on her dignity (the video)."

Law enforcement is only one part of South Africa’s rape crisis, with more than 56,000 cases reported to police last year. But a 2009 study by the government’s Medical Research Council revealed that only one in 25 rapes were reported to the police.

The same survey found more than one quarter of South African men admitted to raping a woman or girl. A South African website dedicated to rape victims said about 450,000 rape cases went unreported each year.

“It is estimated that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read,” the website said, adding, “[In] a survey conducted among 1,500 schoolchildren in the Soweto township, a quarter of all the boys interviewed said that ‘jackrolling’, a term for gang rape, was fun.”

Police on Tuesday arrested seven youths, aged 14 to 20, after they were identified based on the video images.

They appeared Thursday in closed-door court hearing, and will be kept in custody until their next hearing on Wednesday.

Charges are also being considered for a 37-year-old man after police found the girl in his house.

The girl had gone missing on March 21, but police said her mother had not reported her missing, apparently because she often wandered off for days at a time. Charges of child neglect are being considered for the mother.

The girl lived in Bramfischerville, a neighbourhood where raw sewage flows through the streets, in one of the toughest parts of Johannesburg’s sprawling and economically diverse Soweto township.

The rape video has shocked a nation where gruesome tales of sexual violence are commonplace. On Monday alone, the Johannesburg High Court heard 62 rape cases, including a father-son pair charged with attacking 21 women together.

‘It is estimated that a woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read’

Last month in Bloemfontein, a male nurse appeared in court on charges of raping a terminally ill cancer patient, who was held down by a female nurse during the attack.

In January, a man was charged with forcing three garden workers to rape his estranged wife and then mutilate her with household tools, killing her son while she listened to him plead for his life.

But the latest case has proved especially harrowing, partly in shock at the number of people willing to watch the 10 minute and 33 seconds of unbearably graphic video.

Local radio broadcast sound clips, letting listeners hear first-hand the rapists’ taunts and the girl’s desperate pleas. The tabloid Daily Sun published an ominous screen shot showing the attackers standing around their victim.

The low-quality cell phone video shows the girl screaming and begging for her attackers to stop as they took turns to rape her, according to local media.

It ends with one offering her two rands (26¢) for her silence and she is heard crying.

Watching or distributing the video is a crime under South Africa’s child pornography law, and prosecutors vowed to bring charges against anyone in possession of it.

“This episode must force us to take a serious look at ourselves and ask: How did we get here? How did we, as a people, raise monsters who find a joke in this repugnant act,” read The Star’s editorial.