SS_NWS_E1_171107_p09 C M Y K
DOSSIER
S AT U R D AY S TA R
9
November 17 2007
CONFESSIONS OF THOSE WHO BECAME PERPETRATORS
‘I did it because it was done to me’
SUFFER
THE CHILDR
EN
a
four-par
series t
It’s an epidemic – the murder, rape and abuse of our children. Tanya Farber explores this cycle of violence in the third of a four-part series Suffer the Children
MIKE
“To rape a person made me feel good when I told my
buddies. It was normal. To be abnormal was normal.”
So says prison inmate Mike* in an interview for a
documentary by Elena Ghanotakis about rape in SA .
Apart from raping adults, he also sexually abused his
niece. His story, like that of most rapists, causes outrage,
especially when children are the victims. But in recent
studies, rape has been shown to be a cycle – a story with
no beginning and no end, a story in which the villains are
too often once the victims.
When Mike was growing up on the Cape Flats he was
sexually abused daily by his older siblings – a brother
and sister. To this day his mother has not acknowledged
what happened, and as he grew up, he felt it was time
to turn the tables. “I grew up believing it was normal to
have sex in a way that was okay with me even without
the consent of the other.” He took revenge on his sister by
abusing his niece.
By the age of 13 he’d joined a gang. “I was abused
and I don’t use that as a scapegoat, but I think that was
one of the things that fuelled me to rape . What’s more,
when you are part of a gang you are exposed to so many
things. You are bred into this.”
Once in Pollsmoor, Mike was raped by male prisoners,
and the cycle of violence continued. He soon realised he
could join a gang behind bars and rape others instead of
being raped himself. “For a man to be abused it’s like your
manhood is taken away,” he says, “and at the end of the
day you feel justified by raping the next person.”
After years in the gang system, he was asked by the
warders to join a programme aimed at stopping prison
rape and offering support to victims. It was through this
that Mike began to reflect on the effect of rape on the
broader society, including the sexual abuse of children.
“Get a person in prison and he is raped,” he says.
“That person goes out and rapes innocent people, even
babies, because for him it’s now normal. It feels like he’s
retaining his manhood. That’s one of the issues the
government doesn’t look at. That’s how Aids is being
spread.”
NOMZA
Nomza* was also
sexually abused as
a child but, unlike
Mike, her anger
resulted in crimes
that weren’t sexual.
In group
discussions for a
research project run
by psychologist
Malose Langa,
she cried as she
described how her
stepfather raped her
repeatedly when she
was 12. By 18 she
was involved in
armed robberies
after running away
from home and
staying with friends
to escape her
abusive stepfather.
Picture: Rogan Ward
SALAM
For Salam*, who also spoke out for the documentary, it was
witnessing the brutal murder of his little sister that put him
on the road to crime and sexual abuse, both as a victim and
a perpetrator. He was still a child.
“I was walking home with my little sister. She was 7.
I was holding her hand when my second cousin, a 26 gang
member, came up to us and shot my sister. He meant to shoot
me, but he killed my sister instead,” he says.
Salam’s mother couldn’t deal with the pain. He
remembers her fainting in court when the details of her
daughter’s death were discussed. His father was in prison
then – and still is – for rape and murder.
By the age of 13, Salam was also behind bars – for
snatching jewellery. And it was here that he became a victim.
A 15-year-old boy named Byron said he would take care
of Salam and that they should sleep next to each other for
protection. But in the night Byron raped him.
“He put his penis in my anus,” he says, “and if I get hold
of him again, I will shoot him. It didn’t feel nice – the feeling
was eating my heart.”
After this, Salam went to a reformatory but he ran away
and was sent back to Pollsmoor. Byron was waiting for him.
“I was helpless. He’d surrounded himself with gangsters.
NEVI
WILL
Nevi*, an adolescent sex offender who took part in another
research project carried out by Linda Dhabicharan, director
of Childline in Durban, also sheds light on how the cycle of
violence and sexual abuse is played out. He, like the 24
other adolescent sex offenders who took part in the
research, was abused as a child. Abuse experienced by
the offenders included sexual, emotional and physical.
Nevi goes through a list of sexual abuses that took
place on his father’s side of the family, including an
abusive cousin who was seven years older than him;
another cousin who sexually abused him and who had
two younger sisters who appeared “distraught and
withdrawn”; and another uncle who married into the
family and abused his own two daughters and Nevi’s
4-year-old sister. He then followed the same path, taking
out his anger on other young victims.
“I block out my feelings, and that is exactly what I did
when I was being sexually abused,” he says. “And now
I think blocking out my feelings in good and bad situations
has become a bad habit. So what I did was get involved in
sex, especially when I was lonely and angry.
“When I feel low I lust to relieve myself,” he adds.
“When I am depressed I feel like having sex. I feel
powerful when I use money or give sex, it shows me
my worth.”
Will*, another inmate, says his troubles began with an
abusive father who eventually drove him out of the house.
He stayed in a children’s home for three years.
“There was a lot of sexual abuse going on,” he says,
“The head of the place did some nasty things to me.”
Will then lived on the streets and joined a gang.
Thus began a raping spree which ended with the
gang rape of a domestic worker who was stabbed and
left for dead, but who survived the ordeal.
In prison, Will discovered that raping was just as
much a way of life inside as it had been on the outside,
but now he was raping men instead of women. He still
blames his past for his actions.
“Because I grew up with it, I believe it will always
stay with me,” he says, “ It is something that makes
me abusive. I know what I am doing is wrong, but at the
end of the day, I am just thinking about the satisfaction.
It makes me feel like I am paying back for what
happened to me.”
It didn’t feel better the second time, it was still sore.”
Salam was later moved to two other institutions, only to
eventually end up back in Pollsmoor. It had been four years
since he entered the prison system, and he now decided to
protect himself by becoming a perpetrator instead.
“I put these horns on my face to scare people and
I’ve become a 28.
“Because I was sodomised, I’m more streetwise so I do it
too. I enjoy it because it is now time to get rid of my anger.”
But, he adds: “I am feeling sad when I talk about these
things. I must talk because I want people to know so it
doesn’t happen to them.”
THAPELO
Thapelo*, a self-confessed sex offender who has not been
to prison for his actions, expresses similar feelings of
worthlessness.
“I wasn’t abused with sex as a child,” he says, “but
I used to see my father beating my mother.
“And I started feeling empty, and then when I left that
place, I felt like I counted for nothing. I was almost 18.
I started touching a small girl. Later I had sex with an
11-year-old girl – she never told anyone and I’ve stopped.
We have had no fathers in our lives, we don’t know what
it means.”
* These are not their real names.
G See tomorrow’s Sunday Independent for the fourth
feature: What can we do to turn the tide?