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One child raped every 3 minutes in South Africa

 

530 children a day are raped in South Africa….


One child raped every three minutes Report Helping Hand June 2009 June 5 2009 – PRETORIA, South Africa. It’s a mind-boggling statistic: one child is raped every 3 minutes in South Africa.

That’s 530 children who have to suffer the horrors of rape each day.

This shock statistic was released in a report drawn up by experts from an country-wide, in-depth investigation by the Helping Hand charity organisation. see

The SA Police Service  receives ‘only’ a daily 60 formal notifications of child-rapes each day - however child-health experts and social workers who were interviewed by Helping Hand’s researchers said  more than 88% of all the child-rape cases are not even notified to the police at all.

"This means that in reality, about 530 children are raped each day in South Africa, one rape every three minutes,' said Dr Danie Langner when introducing the charity's report at the Imax Theatre on 4 June in Pretoria.

Helping Hand's child-rape report contains shocking statistics and detailed facts about the high levels of murders of children,  and also details the growing physical abuse targetting South African children in horrifying minutae.

Dr Langner said that they held 'countless interviews with social workers, employees of social- and child-welfare and -treatment organisations" which are included in the report. "It provided us with a unique insight into the hands-on experiences of people who are confronted with child-abuse and child-rape on a daily basis.'

1,410 children murdered in 2007

The report notes that child murder has increased by 22,4% since 2006 in South Africa. "In 2007/08, 1,410 murders of children were reported to the SAPS, 22,4% more than the previous year."

45% of all South African rape victims are children:

Actrice Charlise Theron lanceerde Rape Crisis centrum in ZA tegen verkrachtingsepidemiePicture left: South African-born actress Charleze Theron has launched two international charities to highlight South Africa’s rape epidemic and has become a UNICEF ambassador to fight against worldwide violence against women. However, the South African Police statistics also show that 45% of all the rapes in her home country target children.

This shocking reality of official police statistics however do not even begin to describe the truly horrifying real extent of this problem, said Langner, managing director of the Helping Hand Charity in Pretoria.

Police must accept report of a missing child at once – not after only 48 hours…

 During the introduction of the report, a special award was also given by Helping Hand to top South African police detective Director Piet Byleveld, pictured by Beeld newspaper below left, for his life-long dedication to child-protection.

Byleveldt Piet SA top detective award for good child-protection recordByleveldt issued a warning to parents in his acceptance speech: namely that police who tell people to ‘wait 48 hours’ before notifying them that a child was missing, were wrong:  “That’s just taboo. When someone has gone missing, you must insist that an investigation and a search be launched at once,’ said Director Byleveld, who is stationed at the province of Gauteng ‘s SA Police Service’s headquarters. Byleveld was the detective who solved the highly controversial rape and murder case of the impoverished Afrikaans child Sheldean Human in Pretoria North in March 2007. This case had shaken the Afrikaans community to the core for the depraved, terror-filled life this frail, starving little girl had been forced to live.  She was found raped and murdered, and Byleveldt brought her rapist, a man who lived in the same commune, to justice.

Sheldean Human’s seven years on earth were a living hell…

Byleveld said South Africa’s children are in great crisis. “There is a huge problem in a community where parents no longer are interested in their children. “They have no control or supervision over their children and let them come and go as they please,’ he said.  He also issued a call to the public ‘to become the eyes and ears of the community again, to help the police’.

Dr. Danie Langner, managing director of Helping Hand, said that the Sheldean Human case had deeply affected his children they heard about it. “Sheldean’s seven years on earth were hell. She lived with her mother and 39 other poor whites in a commune where she only had food about three times a week. A child from a richer area could also have been kidnapped, raped and murdered. But the reality is that vulnerable children in such impoverished circumstances are abused much easier. Sheldean’s fate is symbolic for the daily existence of many tens of thousands of South African children countrywide. This is a tragedy, that a year after her death, there still are so many Sheldeans countrywide…’  he said.

46,000 more social workers needed:

Other problems revealed:  a severe shortage of capable social workers and the extremely difficult working condiitons for these care-workers, with huge case-loads which are more than twice as high as the acceptable norm worldwide.

South African Child Care Workers 200 caseloads a year 2009"Some organisations such as Child-Care, have more than 2-million children a year -- and their families --  under their care. The average social worker there has to handle  at least 200 cases a year, whereas the acceptable caseload norm is 60.

“For the first time in South African history, social work now has been listed as a 'scarce skill'. In 2007 there were still 12,500 registered social workers in South Africa, but the country is bleeding social workers because of the extremely difficult working conditions and high case loads,” the report noted. The experts interviewed by Helping Hand Charity also warned that the new South African Child Law may be ‘immeasurably advantageous for children, but still remains a stumbling block for protection of children as long as the country still needs an extra 46,000 social workers."

The report also covers the many issues which South African children now have to deal with routinely, on a daily basis, including criminality and sexual assaults at schools, the lure and threat posed by gangsterism and drugs, and the devastating effect of the large child-slavery trade from South Africa, as well as the devastating impact of child-pornography on society.

80% of infants and toddlers suffer skull fractures - Child Line Port Elizabeth

  • "The simple fact that 80% of all the  children younger than two years who are being helped by Child Line Port Elizabeth, suffer from skull fractures, and the fact that young boys are sexually-exploited quite shamelessly by middle-aged men through advertisements in the Western Cape... are just two examples."

Helping Hand has issued a CD, "Hands of Hope", together with the report, with a song by singer/song writer Mel Botes and another twelve top Afrikaans singers, Dozi, Rina Hugo, Juanita du Plessis, Jannie Moolman, Anna Davel, Kevin Leo, Piet Botha and Mathys Roets.

Protecting South Africa’s most vulnerable people: its children: