Durban’s Ocean View place of safety faces allegations of rape, assault and child abuse Paul Kirk Police are investigating six cases of sexual assault and several instances of child abuse and neglect at a place of safety in Durban. One of the sexually motivated assaults, a rape, occurred during a supervised visit to the beach. A young female charge of the home was allegedly pulled behind a bush, beaten and raped by a male inmate of the home. In another incident four boys allegedly held down their victim and gang-raped her in a girls-only dormitory while she screamed for help.
The allegations have prompted Jackie Branfield, a Durban social worker who heads the Welfare Social Action Desk for the African Christian Democratic Party, to claim children are better off on the street. She has vowed never to place a child in the home. Places of safety are state-sponsored refuges for abandoned children. The allegations came to light four weeks ago when Kobus Swart placed a minor who was in his care in the institution. The girl was assaulted while in the care of the institution, and the girl she was with was raped. Swart had been looking after the child while her parents were on an extended business trip overseas. He said this week: “We became deeply concerned about what to do when we discovered she had been experimenting with drugs and was being influenced by the wrong crowd at school. We went to see a social worker who recommended she be sent to the Ocean View place of safety for six weeks’ observation. She never lasted one night though. She is lucky to be alive.” The night the 15-year-old girl was admitted to the institution, Swart’s wife received a hysterical phone call from the child saying that she had been badly assaulted and wanted to get out. The girl was not phoning from the place of safety, but from a nearby tuck-shop owned by Marianne Stephanus. The place of safety – which is run by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Social Welfare and Population Development – does not have a telephone that can be used to make phone calls at night. Swart said the girl was hysterical when he arrived at the tuck-shop and he immediately removed her from the scene. The next day he went to the mayor’s office to complain and it was suggested that he go to the place of safety with the councillor from his area, Jacques Alizart, to investigate. The pair were initially refused entrance. They say children were frantically waving at them from locked windows. Swart says he was shocked by the conditions in the home and discovered that orphans, crippled children and welfare cases were being kept in the same dormitories as child criminals.
Swart went to the Wentworth police station where he opened a case of assault against the alleged ringleader of the gang of rapists. An arrest was made the next day, but the child was not transferred from the shelter. Police, who spoke to the Mail & Guardian on condition of anonymity, claimed they broke the law on a regular basis to avoid sending orphans and lost children to the institution. One policewoman said: “We would rather illegally drive well out of our area to take them to another home than send them to Ocean View. It is an absolute nightmare. You cannot put a 10-year-old orphan whose parents have just been killed in a car crash in with a 17- year-old rapist or drug dealer. That is what is happening at Ocean View.” Swart accompanied Captain Erica Clifton- Parkes from the police child abuse desk at the Amanzimtoti police station to the home. Although Clifton-Parkes was a police officer on official duty she was also refused access until the provincial commissioner of police intervened personally. Swart said: “I went with the captain when she collected the children and fed them. She even gave them clothes herself and removed them from Ocean View to another place of safety. The children gave her a statement that they had been put on the street for talking to me. They also told her that if they went back they would be killed by either the inmates or the staff.” Contacted for comment, Clifton-Parkes said: “I am sorry, but I do not even want to talk about that awful place.” Police have confirmed they are investi- gating a number of charges against the management of the institution. The staff, however, are not accused of any form of sexual attack or assault on children. Police specifically want to know why management did not inform them of rapes and attacks at the institution which, police say, may amount to defeating the ends of justice. When the Mail & Guardian asked to inspect the premises the request was refused. The temporary supervisor, Jay Mungo, claimed she had been told not to speak to the media under any circumstances. The institution’s supervisor, Matilda Morolong, who was in charge during the alleged rape and assault, is in the United States. Mungo didn’t know when she would return.
Before she left Morolong wrote a letter to the provincial Minister of Social Welfare and Population Development, Prince Gideon Zulu, claiming that the two girls had been injured while fighting each other. She also claimed the boy who has been arrested by police for the rape and assault had been attempting to break up the fight. Mike Gumede, a representative of Zulu, the MEC in charge of the institution, said he had been informed of the alleged assault by Morolong. He said she claimed to have interviewed the suspect who said he had broken up a fight between the two girls. Gumede said Morolong had been informed that the girl was injured in the fight and not as a result of an attack by a group of boys. However, a representative for the national Ministry of Welfare, Mbulelo Musi, said his department would investigate the alleged crimes as a priority.