Prison rape: Boy HIV positive?

2003-07-01 22:29

Nicolize Mulder

Pretoria - An Mpumalanga teenager is waiting for the results of HIV tests after he was molested and raped in a cell a few metres from police officers.

The story of the 15-year-old boy who was held in the Amsterdam police cells in Mpumalanga for allegedly stealing a watch and liquor worth R500, unfolded in the Pretoria High Court in a case against the minister of safety and security on Monday.

The application came after a magistrate in Amsterdam ruled numerous times that the boy had to be taken to a place of safety.

Judge Willie van der Merwe also ruled that the boy should be given anti-retroviral treatment if needed it.

Following an interim high court ruling in June, he was taken from the police cells to a temporary venue until he could go to a place of safety.

Dirk Marx, the boy's attorney, says: "HIV tests have been carried out, but we're still waiting for results."

Court evidence showed that the boy had to share the small police cell with 11 awaiting-trial inmates. They all had to sleep on four foam-rubber mattresses. "The conditions in the cell were very bad," the boy said.

Shortly after being arrested, the boy was raped by an older inmate. The cell guards were told, but they did nothing. The boy was raped several times more, a 14-year-old in the cell witnessed.

A dossier was opened only after a social worker was told about the rapes. The older man admitted to raping the boy, but said sex had been offered in exchange for tobacco and food. The the teenager denied this allegation.

He said he was "going crazy because he couldn't understand what the other cellmates were saying.

"I'm very scared that I will become ill after the rape, because the man didn't use a condom."

- Beeld