Tangeni Amupadhi
The official police watchdog body is set to arrest and charge a policeman for raping his three-year-old daughter after police failed to do so for three months after the abuse was first reported to the child protection unit in the Vaal Triangle.
The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) said that, within a week of the child’s grandmother laying a complaint against the police, the ICD found “strong” evidence to arrest the alleged rapist and take him to court.
The child’s grandmother told the ICD that police had taken only one statement from the child’s mother since the case was reported in November, but no progress was made, despite the fact that the policeman is the child’s father. The mother has moved out of the family house with her daughter because of intimidation and harassment from her husband.
The ICD’s Jabu Dhlamini said the watchdog took the extraordinary step of investigating the rape case because of the lack of progress in the matter. “How can we trust them [the child protection unit] to arrest him now?”
Captain Remona Breedenkamp, head of the Vaal Triangle child protection and rape units, dismissed suggestions that the police have done nothing to arrest the alleged rapist. She said the case was “complicated” because the child was too young to testify and that the police were working on how to present the case in court.
She also denied the ICD had taken over the case, saying the police watchdog was simply monitoring progress.
Dhlamini said the ICD had already made several attempts to arrest the policeman and charge him with rape.
“The child’s grandmother came to us last week complaining that the police have done nothing about the case except to take a statement from the mother,” he said.
The grandmother sensed “something was wrong” last March when the child began behaving strangely. After being questioned, the child claimed her father had raped her. A district surgeon found evidence of repeated sexual molestation.
Dhlamini said the ICD would see the case through court. “We’ve taken statements from everybody and the district surgeon’s report.”
The ICD has begun probing the child protection unit’s inaction and hopes to make recommendations for disciplinary measures or refer the matter to the national director of public prosecutions if grounds exist for criminal charges against the unit.