Defilement On The Rise In Kgalagadi District
Pini Bothoko | Monday August 31, 2020 14:37
Tsabong Police Station commander, superintendent David Thapi raised the concern over rampant defilement cases in his policing area in a recent interview with The Monitor.
Thapi revealed that in 2019 the station recorded 10 defilement cases that resulted in three girls falling pregnant. He said this year from January to date 21 cases have been recorded and amongst the girls 17 of them were pregnant.
“These cases are a cause for concern, imagine out of 21 girls who were defiled only four girls were not pregnant whilst 17 of them had to drop out of school due to pregnancy. It is a sad thing to happen to a girl child and it concerns us as the police despite our continued efforts to sensitise men about defilement and other sexual offences.” Thapi added some of the girls were in relationships with their peers whilst the majority were involved with older men. He revealed that almost all of the sexual offences occur whilst those girls are on school holiday.“All of the girls are schooling and some are in boarding school at Tsabong Unified Secondary School. Most of the offences occur when the girls are on school holidays back at their home villages,” he explained. “The affected villages with a number of defilement cases are Maubelo, Tsabong, Omaweneno, Maralaleng to mention but a few. Their pregnancy is usually recognised by teachers back at school.”
The police boss blamed the problem on parents and further accused them of conspiring with the defilers to frustrate their investigations in efforts to bring the offenders to book and get the cases to a trial.
“I have been receiving reports from the school, but the problem we have is that some parents after learning of their children having been defiled, they negotiate with families of the suspects despite the police investigations being ongoing and end up ‘killing’ the cases,” he said. He warned parents to refrain from concealing information about their defiled daughters and allow the police to do their job. Thapi further pleaded for the parents’ cooperation stating that hiding such information from the police is ‘against the law’.He said the police cannot single-handedly solve the problem hence they were calling for everyone’s support.
Thapi said anybody below 18 is considered a child by law and it does not matter whether they consented or not and any sexual act with a child is considered defilement.
Asked on the progress made in the cases, Thapi revealed that their investigations were stalled by the recent lockdowns imposed due to the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). He said they had to wait for the suspects’ DNA tests from the laboratory. “We had to take samples of the girls’ defilers for further tests to the forensics for analysis before we could charge them, but the results were delayed by the lockdowns hence the slow pace concluding investigations into the cases,” he said.
“So far, we have a few cases in which defilers are serving their imprisonment with a number of them awaiting sentencing.”