| Action Society is outraged at the request of a Cape Town mother to only pay a R5 000 fine instead of doing jail time, after allowing her daughter to be brutally raped and tortured by gangsters in 2019. The toddler’s mother and her friend was recently found guilty of allowing the (then two-year-old) “Baby Nadia” to be raped and tortured by gangsters, while they were living in a drugden in Eureka Estate.
“How can any court consider this request? This child’s life has been destroyed and her own mother thinks that a small fine is an acceptable punishment for the horrible pain and trauma she allowed her own child to suffer. We urge the court to consider the harshest sentence for this woman, even more than the 10 years that has been proposed by the state prosecutor,” says Dr Rineé Pretorius, spokesperson for Action Society.
This shocking request that was brought before the court, is just another confirmation that the government is losing it’s fight against gender-based violence and violent crimes against children in our country. 114 women are raped and three children murdered every day in South Africa. The law enforcement and legal instititution are dissapointing victims like Baby Nadia daily. With the GBV conviction rate at a miniscule 7.8 %, violent perpetrators who rape, murder and abuse innocent women and children are set free to continue with their evil deeds. The huge backlog in DNA-evidence is fueling this fire with many cases being struck from the roll due to insufficient evidence. The harsh reality is that these violent perpetrators might walk free and also can’t be linked to other violent crimes because no buccal DNA sample has been taken from them.
“There are over 74,000 criminals serving sentences that have not been subjected to submitting a compulsory DNA sample, as the government is dragging it’s feet to get this urgent bill approved in parliament. It’s time for government to stop talking and start taking serious action against perpetrators of GBV and abusers of children. There is also no progress in the DNA-backlog crisis and Minister Bheki Cele prefers to arrest people for not wearing masks rather than rid our country of this scourge,” concludes Pretorius. |
