STEVEN SWINDELLS, Johannesburg | Tuesday
SOUTH African schoolgirls are being raped and sexually assaulted by classmates and teachers at an alarming rate, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report issued on Tuesday.
The report described widespread human rights abuses at the country’s schools and provided further evidence that South Africa was gripped by sexual violence.
”It’s very widespread…Girls are being raped, sexually abused, sexually harassed and assaulted,” Erika George, the report’s author, said.
Human Rights Watch interviewed 36 victims including a nine-year-old who was gang-raped by classmates and a 15- year-old sexually assaulted by her teacher.
Most victims interviewed had received hostile or indifferent responses to their complaints from school authorities and many had dropped out of their studies because of the trauma, the rights body said.
”Everything reminds me, wearing my school uniform reminds me of what happened…I can hear him (the teacher) laughing at me in my dreams,” one schoolgirl who was assaulted by her teacher told the rights group.
Human Rights Watch called on the government to develop a national plan of action to combat the problem, including procedures to better screen teachers and take action against sexual abusers.
It also blamed the legacy of apartheid for fuelling a culture of violence endemic in schools and society as a whole.
South Africa’s commercial centre of Johannesburg has earned itself the reputation as rape capital of the world.
The country’s AIDS epidemic – 4.7 million South Africans are living with HIV-Aids, higher than anywhere else in the world – adds a frightening dimension to the country’s rampant levels of rape.
A South African Web site, Rape set up to help victims says one rape occurs every 23 seconds but only one in 37 victims report their assault to the authorities.
One in four South African men surveyed in a three-year study by the Johannesburg city council said they had committed rape before they were 18.
Eight out of 10 young men polled believed women were responsible for causing sexual violence while three in ten believed women who were raped ”asked for it”. One in five of about 28_000 men surveyed thought women enjoyed being raped.
Children just months old have been reported raped to death while many rape victims fear reprisals by the rapist or his friends if they go to the police. Click for the full Human Rights Watch report – Reuters
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