Print article   email story

A recent ignominy ruptured a family, nation and the world, but South Afirca is not immune to incest either. LOYISO SIDIMBA probes this shameful behaviour.

RESPONSES to any revelation of incestuous behaviour show society’s abhorrence for such acts.

Josef Fritzl held his now 42-year-old daughter Elisabeth in a windowless bunker in his house in Amstetten, Austria, for 24 years.

He impregnated her seven times. One child died in infancy and Fritzl says he burnt the corpse.

Officials say there is no evidence that the 73-year-old’s wife, Rosemarie (69), knew anything about Elisabeth’s fate.

Police say Fritzl started abusing his daughter when she was 11.

Though South Africa has the world’s worst rapefigures, little is said about incest, but children’s organisations note a worrying increase in incest cases and of its reporting.

This means that increasingly, children, especially girls, are increasingly unsafe in their own homes.

A staggering majority of the incest cases heard in South African courts involve children.

The South African Police Service’s (SAPS) latest available crime statistics revealed that 52 617 rape cases were reported in the period June 2006 to June last year – a ratio of 111 for every 100 000 citizens.

The SAPS does not release separate figures for children, but estimates put the number of raped and sexually abused children at 150 a day – about 55 000 a year.

Activists claim that only one out of every nine of these sexual offences are ever reported in South Africa, meaning that close to half a million children are raped every year.

According to the SAPS figures, the perpetrators were relatives, friends or acquaintances of more than half of the victims (57%).

Alarmingly, more than three quarters of the victims knew the perpetrators.

And almost two out of 10 (16.2%) perpetrators identified themselves as related to the victims.

It may therefore be correct to say that close to two out of every 10 sexual offences committed in South Africa are incestuous.

Last year, a Cape Town police station revealed that the alleged rapists in 80% of the 139 cases reported at the station were the victims’ fathers, uncles, grandfathers, mother’s boyfriends or other family members.

Shaheeda Omar of the Teddy Bear Clinic in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, says incest is often kept in the closet, but that more disclosures are being made because of the promotion and protection of children’s rights.

She recalls a recent therapy session with a mother in her 40s who had been raped by her biological father.

“She spoke about her experience for the first time. She assumed it was normal behaviour for fathers, but was now having difficulty because she was fearful for her own kids.”

The mother, adds Omar, was finding it difficult to embrace her children and realised she needed help.

Omar challenges mothers, who, she says, are often aware of sexual abuse in their homes, to take action.

“The onus does rest on the other parent.”

She says telltale signs of abuse include favouritism and the victim spending a lot of time indoors, isolated and unable to socialise with their peers.

The perpetrators are often indiscreet and indiscriminate with the attention and material things they give their victims.

Omar says this is when the other parent should step in.

“Sometimes the victim becomes overly compliant or exhibits inappropriate sexualised and self-defeating behaviour.”

Because nobody immediately notices the pain, says Omar, the victim needs the pain to come to the fore and as a result exhibits suicidal tendencies.

She says neighbours and the community often also aren’t aware of the abuse because these families often live in seclusion.

Despite law prohibiting people from marrying “each other on account of consanguinity (blood relationship), affinity or an adoptive relationship” and from engaging “in an act of sexual penetration with each other”, incest often occurs and South Africa has experienced a number of cases recently.

A 55-year-old Johannesburg father was recently sentenced to six life-terms for sexually abusing his daughter (12) for four years.

The man’s wife took photographs and filmed the appalling acts.

City Press recently reported on a KaNyamazane pastor who had raped his daughter for eight years, fathering her three kids.

The 50-year-old man said he had sexually abused his daughter so she could see the kingdom of heaven when she died.

Childline South Africa national coordinator Joan van Niekerk says many sexual offences often go unreported.

“Children are turned away when they try and report abuse within the family because the police sometimes regard this as a domestic matter,” she says, adding that children also often feel constrained by their loyalty to the family to keep the abuse a secret.

Van Niekerk doubts the country is doing enough: “We have in effect dismantled our child protection units and this means that many cases of child abuse are dealt with by people with no specialised skills and who have little understanding of its impact and the difficulties in reporting the experience.

“Even the recently passed Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act has not increased the protection children get when they initiate a criminal justice process.”

She says the courts in which children are expected to testify are also not always child-friendly.

“Though we have some progressive legislation in place, implementing it remains a challenge.”

Psychologist and University of Witwatersrand lecturer Joseph Seabi says victims of incest need to rebuild feelings of safety, trust, control and self-worth.

He says the treatment of trauma involves re-experiencing the traumatic events.

“In therapy, a child will learn that what she did was probably the best she could have done to survive at the time. The aim of therapy is to desensitise the child to these painful events.

“It is crucial that the victim is not criticised for not resisting intrusion or for not talking about it earlier,” says Seabi.

He says family members should listen and try to understand why the victim was unable to prevent the abuse from happening.

He suggests the following when dealing with a victim of sexual abuse: