A seven-year-old girl who could hardly walk refused to tell her mother that she had been raped by ”uncle” out of fear for her life, the mother told the Durban Regional Court on Thursday.
The woman, who cannot be named, told the court that when she returned home from a visit to Durban’s Prince Mshiyeni Hospital she found her daughter on a bed.
”When she tried to get up, she couldn’t stand properly,” said the woman.
The concerned mother then sent her daughter to get water.
”She went to fetch water for me, but I noticed she could not walk properly. When I asked her what was wrong, she said ‘uncle is going to hit me’.”
The woman was giving testimony in a rape case against an 18-year-old youth whom she employed at her tuck-shop and who also boarded at her home in Durban’s Umlazi.
In November last year she left the youth in charge of the tuck-shop and asked him to look after her seven-year-old and a one-year-old toddler, while she took a four-year-old to hospital for a chest infection.
Upon her return her daughter refused to talk to her.
”I started shouting. But she wouldn’t talk to me,” said the woman.
It was only after the girl’s father assured her that the man would not harm her, that the girl told her parents what had happened. The woman said her daughter told her that the youth had threatened to kill her if she reported the incident.
Asked about her relationship with the youth before the alleged rape, she said: ”I treated him like my own sibling. He treated me like a sister.”
Under cross-examination she told the court that she had not known that she should not bathe her daughter before she was seen by a medical expert.
She took her daughter to hospital the next day at 9am and ”we sat there until it was late at night” before the child was attended to.
Dr Vajjnah Mahomed, who works at Prince Mshiyeni Hospital’s Thuthutzela care centre, said that girl had not previously been sexually active and there ”was definitely penetration”.
She said that when she examined the woman’s daughter it had not been possible to secure any samples of semen because the girl had been bathed.
Asked why it had taken so long for the girl to be examined, she said the centre saw as many as 150 abused children a month and that one consultation could take as long as seven hours. – Sapa