Teddy bears and colouring books are part of an arsenal deployed by a dedicated team of specialised prosecutors and volunteers determined to protect society from predators targeting women and children, often in their own families.
This, despite facing huge internal hurdles, one of the biggest being a DNA backlog which makes it difficult to prove abuse allegations, especially when it is a child’s word against an adult such as the father or uncle. In May, police minister Bheki Cele told the national assembly that SA has a 36,626 case backlog for DNA analysis, including cases linked to rape, gender-based murder and domestic abuse.
But a group of law enforcement officials in the Western Cape has been so successful – against the odds – in supporting victims of gender-based violence that their system has now been implemented at all sexual offences courts countrywide.
At Grassy Park police station in Cape Town, which boasts a near 100% arrest rate for rape cases and 89% for domestic violence cases, station commander Lt Col Dawood Laing says DNA results in rape cases can take nearly a year to return.
“We have a delayed justice system because we wait about 10 or 11 months for a DNA report. Cases are postponed for long periods. Victims have just come to grips of dealing with the incident, then the victim goes to court and all the trauma comes back,” said Laing.
The wait adds to the trauma faced by thousands of rape survivors, with prosecutors and police being forced to build complicated investigations involving the victim meticulously recounting incidents, which in many cases nearly ended their lives, when a positive DNA match could have secured a conviction in a matter of months.
The aim of the victim-centred approach, where all the stakeholders work together, is to make the process less traumatic for the victim.
— Sexual offences prosecutor Shahieda Poole
Instead, cases can drag out for years, taking their toll on victims and bogging down prosecutors and investigators.
“For three to five years that trauma is repeated in the victim’s head,” said Laing.
In his speech to parliament on May 11, Cele said the national backlog at SA’s four forensic science laboratories stood at more than 2-million cases.
He added that more than 60,000 of those cases had been received by laboratories but were yet to be analysed.
An astonishing 82,000 of the 200,000 case backlog was related to gender-based violence and femicide, Cele admitted. He said the crisis was caused by a lack of funding and “poor contract management” in the police.
The Western Cape’s forensic science laboratory in Plattekloof, Cape Town, has a 113% case backlog, tailing Gauteng, the leader in this morbid list, by 2%.
The laboratory, situated on the southern slopes of Tygerberg, has a view over the Cape Flats, the epicentre of what has been described as a national rape and gender-based violence epidemic.
In the Wynberg sexual offences court, the first of its sort in the country when it was launched as a pilot project in 1997, a handful of specialist sexual offences prosecutors had about 600 cases ready for trial by the end of August.
Defying all odds, they aim to win 70% of these cases.
Islands of comfort in sea of trauma
Sunday Times Daily spent time in the Wynberg court, speaking with the prosecutors on the front line, and discovered a tightly connected system emerging from the experiences of victims, police and prosecutors. It is a system that sets the gold standard for the South African criminal justice system.
Sitting in the Wynberg courthouse office of senior sexual offences prosecutor Shahieda Poole is disarming. On her table, where she often consults with child victims, are crayons, colouring books and teddy bears of all kinds. The entire fourth floor is dedicated to sexual crimes and the interior exudes the excellence of the “service” the court officials working here aim for.
Poole and her colleague Lisle Nel from the National Prosecuting Authority’s community affairs unit believe that treating the victim’s trauma from the moment they report their case is paramount to getting convictions.
“It used to be that you get to the police station and, for example, they shove a J88 into your hand and say you have to go for a medical,” said Nel.
“We all know the realities of waiting at a hospital emergency unit. Now you are sitting there as a rape victim where it’s expected that you need to report as quickly as possible, that you don’t bath, don’t wash, and you are sitting there sometimes for longer than a day,” she said.
But this situation has changed drastically.
When a rape victim reports a crime to the police now, Laing said they will first be assisted by an officer who will take their initial statement. If the victim is female, the officer will be female.
According to Poole, an officer from the police’s family violence, child protection and sexual offences units (FCS) will then take the victim to a Thuthuzela Care Centre (TCC) based inside designated hospitals. Thuthuzela means “to comfort” in isiZulu.
“At the TCC centre there will be a doctor. There is also on-site counselling. We call it containment counselling,” said Poole.
“All cases that come through the TCC are screened by a prosecutor like Lisle, who is the case manager,” said Poole.
“She has to ensure that the investigation is done right. She has to give guidance to the police. She also makes sure when DNA is requested, she monitors the DNA sample at the lab and makes sure the processes are done correctly,” said Poole.
“Sometimes she will also consult with the victim,” said Poole.
“The aim of the victim-centred approach, where all the stakeholders work together, is to make the process less traumatic for the victim,” Poole.
Seeing the successes of the Wynberg sexual offences court and the first TCC based in Heideveld, the government realised the need for such courts and TCCs across the country. In the Western Cape alone there are now eight centres.
Now every sexual offences court has a TCC and police FCS units linked to it.
Both government and non-governmental organisations are also plugged into the system.
Even if a docket was closed for some reason, then we ask the police to forward us those dockets, so we can review them and if the reason is that there were witnesses who didn’t want to continue with the case, then we try to convince them if they can be traced.
— Sexual offences prosecutor Lisle Nel
In the Wynberg sexual offences court, the NGO Rape Crisis Trust has an office where dedicated personnel are on standby to give counselling to victims, many of whom are too traumatised to speak about their encounters. Ilitha Labantu is another organisation which works closely with sexual offences courts as well as Childline and Safeline that offer invaluable counselling for children.
The NPA also set up a court preparation service with dedicated personnel who prepare victims for their day in court and even draft things like victim impact statements.
Nel said at TCCs, unlike at hospitals, rape victims are given preferential treatment.
“They immediately see a doctor. Trauma containment is done immediately. HIV treatment is done there, so they don’t have to go somewhere else,” she said.
“They get their medication there. If it gets relevant they can get termination of pregnancy, so the plans are made for that through the TCCs to follow up and carry out the operation if requested by the rape victim,” said Nel.
“The forensic part of the investigation gets done there by expert doctors who do it on a daily basis. These are not general practitioners. These are people who are specifically trained to work with rape cases,” she said.
“So the TCC is a one-stop centre where all the different stakeholders in the criminal justice system get together and deliver a service,” said Nel.
Victims don’t have to go to the police first either; they can walk into any TCC and get help. Many people who don’t want to go through the criminal justice system, including many children, go directly to these centres seeking help. This is often the case with domestic abuse cases.
“What isn’t really highlighted is the trafficking of victims. If there are trafficking victims, they also go through the TCCs before they are placed in safe houses,” said Nel.
Nel said experts at the centres are reactive to individual situations and will intervene to secure the safety of victims where necessary.
“If you have a domestic violence victim whose life is endangered by them going back home, or for sexual offences, the TCCs, together with the police, make arrangements to have those victims placed in a safe house and the police will transport them,” she said.
Serial rapists caught in the data
The police and prosecutors are always watching for trends in the data they receive weekly from the TCCs, including signs of serial rapists, domestic abuse, or sexual abuse of children in their homes.
“We often pick up serial rape cases through reports made at TCCs. DNA is taken and swabs are placed on the centralised system,” said Nel.
Poole said the DNA can link perpetrators, even if the victim doesn’t know who they are.
“You might start picking up that you have eight cases which look like there is a DNA linkage and then the police can pick it up on their database,” she said.
“We keep a database of every first appearance that comes in at sexual crimes. So we can go and look when an accused comes in and pick up that there were previous appearances and previous arrests,” she said.
Nel said when children report sexual assault, the police always open a case on behalf of the state and start investigating.
She has a database on every court appearance and every victim report from the Heideveld TCC dating back to 2014.
“We can see where there’s a problem, for example when a child reports being sexually assaulted three times over a three-year period. What’s the problem here? Are the parents not taking care of the child? What are the conditions under which these rapes are taking place?” said Nel.
“With something like that you can immediately draw inferences because how is it possible that the same child is raped three times?
“If we have victims who pop up more than once, we pick that up and if we have accused who pop up on the database regularly, we pick that up too,” said Nel.
“Even if a docket was closed for some reason, then we ask the police to forward us those dockets, so we can review them and if the reason is that there were witnesses who didn’t want to continue with the case, then we try to convince them if they can be traced,” she said.
Poole said a big part of the problem with victims which prevents them from cooperating or reporting their crimes is the guilt they feel.
“We often have to tell children, even young men, that they have to understand that there was nothing that they did wrong; they didn’t ask for this. You are not responsible for what happened to you,” said Poole
“Many of the people blame themselves. Why did I put myself out there? Why did I go there? Women will say, why did I flirt with the man? Why did I kiss him? Why did I enjoy a drink with him?” said Poole.
“It doesn’t mean he had the right to rape you,” she said.
High arrest rates, low prosecution
According to Laing, their high arrest rates do not translate into high prosecution rates. Nel and Poole said there is a disconnect between the police statistics and the prosecuting authorities statistics, due to a variety of reasons, but in many cases victims simply do not cooperate with the state.
Poole said women often refuse cooperation with prosecutors and FCS investigators after opening a case.
“There’s always hope. The complainant always hopes that it will get better and that it is a single incident. Their conditions also make it difficult for them. If you are a woman with no income and no breadwinner, it puts a lot of pressure on you,” said Nel.
“They have to choose between their own welfare and the welfare of their children, in a country where there isn’t economic empowerment, where unemployment is high, where there is to a great degree hunger, and where people grab at the R350 per month welfare grant,” she said.
These women also often have children with the men abusing them, complicating matters further.
“Sometimes you sit with the victims here in this office and you try to explain to them: ‘You know what ma’am, the next time we’re not going to sit with a complainant, we’re going to sit with a murder docket’,” said Poole.
While their jobs don’t require them to go further, they often venture far beyond the call of duty.
“We are not prosecutors who say we only deal with the law and nothing else, we’re only concerned with the criminal matter. We take it further, we contact social development or places of safety we can refer them to. We assist them with those things. It’s not a matter of just saying, ma’am, that’s your problem, you need to be in court,” said Poole.
Prosecutors often decide to provisionally remove cases from the court role, leading to controversy and friction with communities desperate to see justice done.
The reasons for this usually come down to one of two things; either there is not enough evidence linking the identity of the perpetrator to the crime, in many cases as a result of a lack of forensic evidence available at the time of arrest; or in many cases, and especially with children, the victims can take months and even years of treatment before they are emotionally ready to testify in their cases.
Some victims want to withdraw their cases.
“We try to convince them to continue. Many of them walk out of here angry because we refuse to withdraw cases, because we understand the seriousness, we understand the dynamic, we understand the trauma,” said Nel.
“Many times we refuse to withdraw the cases if they walk in at the first appearance, and we try to get them counselling to try to see whether we can sway the victim, but you often aren’t successful there,” she said.
Poole said witnesses often also don’t want to get involved in cases.
And then there is the infinite complexity of building cases when children are involved.
Our children’s trauma
“When it comes to children, the reaction of the parent is always that someone has to be arrested. But the dynamic with children is such that you at least have to get a statement or something from a child that gives you an indication of who the person is and what the person did, though it doesn’t have to be in detail,” said Nel.
Initially the prosecutor won’t even talk about the incident. We’ll talk about how old they are, which school they are in, what they like, do they have brothers and sisters, just so that we can tell them what our role is, why we are helping them, just so they can understand.
“Sometimes you have children with a mental disability. They know how to communicate with their family and their family understands them. So they can often tell their families what happened, but when they have to testify their testimony doesn’t get accepted in law,” she said.
“Many times what happens, especially when a child tells their friends about something that happened, the mom doesn’t want her children to get involved in another child’s case, but that testimony is so essentially important for us in the case, because you have to present the reporting of that incident to the court as testimony,” said Nel.
Children may tell someone that something happened to them, but presenting that testimony in a court of law is a very different scenario.
“Initially the prosecutor won’t even talk about the incident. We’ll talk about how old they are, which school they are in, what they like, do they have brothers and sisters, just so that we can tell them what our role is, why we are helping them, just so they can understand,” said Poole.
“We show them what the building looks like, where they are going to stand. We have books and dolls everywhere so that they feel comfortable,” she said.
Some children bury the incident so deep in the back of their minds that it takes years of careful counselling to extract the information necessary for the case.
“Some children can’t speak. We first have to send them to Childline or Safeline, so those social workers can work with them, so they can be strong enough to talk about what happened. Sometimes it takes 12 or more sessions with those social workers before they are ready to speak in court,” said Poole.
Nel said a major challenge for children who lack access to adequate early childhood development, is that they are unable to distinguish between a truth and a lie.
If they fail the simple test of establishing their grasp of this concept, the court cannot accept their testimony and the case is scrapped.
‘We want victims to get the best service’
It takes a special sort of person to be a sexual offences prosecutor. They are specialists in their field and due to the fact that they have a dedicated unit, only prosecutors who want to work with sexual offences cases end up in these courts.
These prosecutors often double as social workers, mothers and fathers, and counsellors to the victims they work with. It takes a toll on them personally but their success rates speak of their commitment to their job.
“We can’t guarantee convictions. I feel, however, that if the victim leaves here, whatever we do, she has to feel she got the best service,” said Poole.
“The prosecutors are sometimes overloaded; they have their own issues. We try to arrange for debriefing where we can,” she said.
“Are we always successful, no, but do we always fight for what we believe in, yes,” said Nel.
But for the criminal justice system to work, Nel and Poole say the community needs to take responsibility for what is happening in society.
“If a person sees that her neighbour is being assaulted by her husband, she must speak out, she mustn’t keep quiet. Say this is what happened, this is the testimony,” said Poole.
“If people see that the community stands together, then perhaps we’ll have more convictions because someone can accompany her and encourage her and say what your husband did was wrong,” she said.
“The court can give a degree of relief. We can convict someone and say don’t do it again,” said Nel. “But can we really solve that problem? Can a court solve that problem?
“The community needs to realise that they need to get involved for the courts to function successfully,” said Nel.
This is the second feature in a three-part series on gender-based violence and the stories of the police and prosecutors working the cases behind the scenes.
