A 27-year-old man who admits he cannot control his sexual urges will spend 12 years behind bars for raping his 10-year-old cousin.
The man from Orange Farm, south of Johannesburg, told the Vereeniging Circuit Court he committed the crime because of too much pornography.
”I have a serious erection problem. I cannot control myself after I have been aroused.”
He said that after watching pornography he went to his cousin’s bedroom.
”I did not plan to rape her, it just happened.”
Ketso Moorosi-Mabusela, a Johannesburg-based clinical psychologist, told the Mail & Guardian Online on Wednesday that the rape had probably been planned.
”Pornography is stimulation for any person who intends engaging in sexual activity,” she said.
Moorosi-Mabusela said that a victim of such a rape is normally someone that the sexual predator knows and can target easily. ”They [the rapes] are normally preconceived actions, and watching pornography is some form of preparation for the predators.”
Easy access to pornography is a contributing factor to rape, Moorosi-Mabusela said.
”Pornographic images are all over our television screens, hence the large increase in the number of rapes that occur as a result of that.”
The Christian Action Network recently held a rally outside the Cape Town offices of e.tv to protest against the screening of late-night pornography.
Taryn Hodgson, the international coordinator of the Christian Action Network, said porn on free-to-air national television was ”outrageous”.
”There are many parentless homes in South Africa and many homes where children are not supervised as to what they are watching,” said Hodgson.
Members of Africa Christian Action, Christians for Truth and other mission organisations and churches said the films ”fuel rape and abuse”.
Hodgson said e.tv’s executive officer of regulatory affairs, Olefile Bop Tshweu, denied the link between pornography and sexual abuse.
”We submit that in broadcasting these films the time slot is appropriate, the warnings are adequate, the content does not breach the code and there is no evidence that these films contribute to sexual crimes,” Tshweu wrote in response to a letter presented by the Christian network to e.tv.
Hodgson said that it is unfortunate that it is not known what kind of pornography was watched by the Vereeniging rapist, but ”pornography is the theory and rape is the practice”.
Hodgson insists that rape statistics escalated dramatically after the legalisation of pornography in 1992. ”Police records show that reported child rape increased from 3 600 in 1992 to almost 15 000 in 1996.”
People Opposing Woman Abuse’s Delphine Serumaga told the M&G Online that the laws on pornography in South Africa are not strict enough. ”If we would pay to close attention to the way that pornography objectifies women maybe the laws on pornography would be more stringent,” she said.