Mormon missionaries gang-raped

2006-07-03 22:56

Dries Liebenberg

Durban - Two young foreign missionaries who ran into a "four-person crime wave" were repeatedly raped and robbed next to a busy road on the South Coast.

One of the Mormon missionaries, a 22-year-old woman from Kenya, was shot in the stomach when their attackers scratched around in the women's bags for valuables after the rapes. The bullet lodged in her rib cage.

After she and her 21-year-old Californian colleague were raped in Port Shepstone about 17:00 on Friday, the attackers went on a rampage.

In the space of 2½ hours they attacked and robbed three more groups of people within five kilometres of the rapes, said captain Vincent Pandarum on Monday.

He was announcing the arrest of four men in connection with the rapes and other attacks.

The two missionaries, who have worked for the past four months in Port Shepstone, were walking back to their rented garden flat.

They had been speaking in a park at Oslo Beach to a group of deaf young people about the Mormon church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

Others waited in the bushes

Mormon missionary president in KwaZulu-Natal and Swaziland Danny Brock said on Monday: "They were walking alongside a busy road (the old Harding highway), which they knew well.

"Moreover, it was one of the busiest times of the day with cars whizzing past. Safer than that, you would not get."

He said a man with a pistol stopped the two women near a primary school and ordered them into the bushes where the other attackers waited. One was armed with a knife.

Pandarum said that while police were investigating the crime scene about 18:00, they heard on the radio that two women had been robbed about 500m further along the same road and that one had been stabbed.

At a short-cut to Marburg outside Port Shepstone, the four allegedly also held up three men and robbed them of cash, cellphones, a jacket and shoes.

Two of the four eventually were arrested with the help of police dogs after they robbed two men sitting in front of a fire in Marburg and a scuffle began.

'Gave up 18 months of their lives'

Another man was arrested on Sunday in Murchisson and a fourth man handed himself in to police in Port Shepstone on Monday morning, said Pandarum.

Brock said: "The two 'sisters' voluntarily gave up 18 months of their lives to make a difference in this country.

"Now, they're getting the best care money can buy. When this is over, they plan to remain in South Africa and complete their missionary work."

- Beeld