Charlene Smith
Keith Bennett has a mild manner and a pleasant face many would call him charming. Yet last Wednesday a Roodepoort magistrate sentenced him to 18 years in jail.
For more than 20 years he had beaten, raped, shot, stabbed and terrorised his former wife. On each of the many occasions he had been arrested, files either disappeared or magistrates acquitted him.
It took one determined police officer to change all that.
Two weeks ago National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi said there were not enough police resources to investigate domestic violence cases. While that may have sounded like a clarion call to wife beaters that it was open season, not all police officers or courts accept that.
Sergeant Paul Fern (32) of the Florida detective branch in Roodepoort, takes seriously the police motto “to protect and serve”.
Last year when he was given the docket against Bennett, Fern pulled out every stop to get a justice long denied. He says he does so with all cases.
Bennett was charged with assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm he pistol-whipped his tiny former wife Anne Riberts into unconsciousness and attempted murder for shooting her friend three times. He was also found guilty of possession of an unlicensed firearm and ammunition. He was not charged with driving through town with his sons during a drama where police hostage negotiators were called in to ensure the boys’ safe release.
Nor could the court take into account each of the many times over two decades he stabbed Riberts once 21 times with a screwdriver, or of the fact that he raped her at gunpoint after they were divorced, locked her in a car boot or beat her endlessly.
However, Fern pulled every old court or police record he could find and, backed by prosecutors, realised this could become a test case in an area woefully neglected by the criminal justice system.
He called in a well-known criminologist to prepare a victim impact statement and social workers to record the devastating impact two decades of abuse had had on Riberts and her children.
Fern says domestic violence cases can be difficult to investigate “if there are no witnesses or physical injuries. But in the police we see too many people beating their spouses and kids. And yet no one really wants to get involved.
“The law allows a neighbour or family member to apply for an interdict to stop the beatings, but this happens very rarely.”
Riberts says: “You can’t imagine the sense of relief I and my children feel. This has been a long, difficult period. I’m not sure if we would have got this far without Inspector Fern.
Ecletia Bosch of Alberton had an entirely different experience with the police. For her former husband, it’s open season. Two weeks ago she was allegedly beaten and indecently assaulted in front of her 15-year-old daughter by Peter Bosch, a former policeman. She and her child fled her home and laid charges.
He was arrested and “then taken for breakfast the following morning by the police”, Ecletia Bosch claims.
The next day he appeared in the Germiston Magistrate’s Court where prosecutor Godfrey Ramaroka withdrew charges against him. He gave no explanation and when the Mail & Guardian asked him why, he said: “I don’t have to tell you anything” and slammed the phone down.
Bosch moved into his former wife’s house. She had to get clothes for herself and her daughter in the company of two police officers, who did not seem to have the capacity to evict him from the house she had bought.
Gauteng deputy attorney general Joe Davidovitz investigated the case and said Ramaroka had “made a mistake”. Bosch was rearrested and charged with assault and indecent assault. He was also forced to vacate the house that Ecletia Bosch plans to sell because she and her daugher fear returning home.