Crime experts have assured worried parents that kidnapping for ransom is unlikely to become a trend in South Africa.
South Africans have been shocked by the tragic kidnapping and killing of 21-year-old Leigh Matthews, and left fearful that these events signal the emergence of a wave of such crimes.
Matthews’s body was found on Wednesday afternoon in Grasmere, south of Johannesburg, after she was kidnapped on July 9 and reported missing the next day.
Despite perceptions that it is not a common crime in South Africa, statistics show that the country is second only to Nigeria in kidnapping cases in Africa, said forensic psychologist Dr Mark Welman. There are about 20 000 cases of kidnapping around the world every year — 80% of them in South America.
But Gareth Newham of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation said kidnapping for ransom is a difficult crime to pull off, compared with a crime such as car hijacking.
It includes identifying the right person, locking up the victim and engaging with his or her family for the ransom possibly over an extended period.
Welman said that although there is always a risk that any crime might be copied, it was unlikely in this case.
”If the ransom had been paid and Leigh returned home, then criminals would have said, ‘Look how easy it is.’ But now potential criminals realise police will be involved and the risks are very high,” Welman said.
He added that families at risk are also likely to take precautionary measures to protect themselves.
Police have appealed to the media to stop speculating about the circumstances of Matthews’s death, and the family has requested privacy for its mourning.
A tired Superintendent Chris Wilken, Johannesburg police spokesperson, told the Mail & Guardian on Thursday that he was extremely disappointed with the way the media has handled Matthews’s death.
”They speculate about her death and then quote unidentified police sources. And when you ask them about these sources, they cannot give you an answer,” he said. ”There is total chaos out there and falsehoods are flying all over the place. And they have shown absolutely no sympathy to the family.”
Wilken said unnecessary speculations about the state of the body, the time of death and how Matthews was killed were making the police’s work more difficult. He said more would be revealed when the post-mortem was concluded.
”The sensitivity surrounding the investigations in this matter may prejudice the case if details of the investigation are released in the media,” he said.
Meanwhile, a United States company, Wherify Wireless, has launched a tagging device via which parents are able to keep tabs on their child-ren 24 hours a day, as reported by ThisDay.
The device, called Wherify Watch, is a top seller in the US and is due to go on sale in Britain in a few months’ time. The company has plans to import the devices to other countries, such as South Africa, in the future.
Children are monitored through a watch attached to an arm, and only the parents are able to remove it. Parents can locate their offspring by logging on to the company’s website. The watch can also be set to call emergency services if it is forcibly removed.