Gaye Davis
SHE knew George Biggs (38) well — he was like a brother to her. Gavin Adriaanse (30) she’d only just met when she went with them to drop off a friend, taking along her sister’s child, who she was babysitting.
When they didn’t take her home immediately, saying they first wanted to visit someone, she wasn’t too worried. But when Adriaanse started playing with her hair, she got uneasy. And when she realised Biggs wasn’t going to heed her pleas to be taken home, that unease turned to fear.
Instead of protecting her from Adriaanse, Biggs told her to play along, saying Adriaanse would shoot them both if she didn’t. After Adriaanse raped her, Biggs did too; her screams made her two-year-old charge weep. Half-dressed, she fled to a nearby block of flats, from where she rang her mother.
She was 19 then, still living with her parents. This week, she faced her two assailants again, testifying in a Cape Town courtroom on the psychological impact of the events of the night of February 4 1989.
She was there because acting Appeal Court judge Mr Justice Pierre Olivier, with judges Grosskopf and Nienaber concurring, set aside the seven-year jail sentences that regional court magistrate Jess Huggett originally imposed.
In a decision described by legal experts as highly unusual, Judge Olivier referred the matter back to Huggett for fresh sentencing, saying evidence should be led on the men’s suitability for correctional supervision. When the case went to the Cape Supreme Court on appeal, the sentences were upheld.
Correctional Services officer Captain Frederik Germishuys gave that evidence this week. He said neither man showed remorse. Both still denied the rapes. Biggs’ sister Belynda (Adriaanse’s wife) alleged he’d tried raping her when she was still at school; Biggs was also convicted in 1992 of having intercourse with a minor after being tried for rape; his sentence is on hold pending the outcome of this matter.
The woman — now 25, with a six-month-old daughter — testified in camera. In an interview with the Weekly Mail & Guardian, she told how she still suffered ”black depressions” and nightmares.
”I blocked everything out for years. It was when I went to the Father (priest) to have my baby baptised that it just slipped out and he took me to Lifeline for counselling. I’m going to go to Rape Crisis now.
‘I didn’t have a 21st birthday party because I felt unclean. I’m still scared in crowds and driving with men in cars. I don’t watch TV when there’s violence — it means that night I’ll have nightmares.
”The whole incident wasn’t talked about at all in my family. For them, it happened a long time ago and was finished with then. They don’t think about the trauma and the consequences.
”I was very angry when I heard the sentences had been set aside, and that it was said I hadn’t had any psychological effects. Nobody asked me how I felt in the first trial.
”I wasn’t at all keen on the idea of having to face them again. I didn’t look at them once while I was in court. The first time, I was just numb — I didn’t feel anything. This time, I was afraid.”
The case was proceeding at the time of going to press.
* Two years ago, Cape Supreme Court Judge DM Williamson accepted expert evidence on Rape Trauma Syndrome (RTS) — a range of physical and emotional reactions to rape.
RTS has been used overseas to corroborate rape survivors’ claims that they did not consent to sex, to explain poor memory after a rape and to help courts decide on sentences for rapists.
”The negative effects of rape are not yet widely known or recognised in South Africa,” according to Desiree Hansson of UCT’s Institute of Criminology. ”Many of our courts are still operating under the false impression that rape is merely unwanted sex and therefore that it does not damage rape survivors, especially in the long term.”