Letlhakane On The BrinkAs Sex Crimes Spike
Lesedi Mkhutshwa | Monday May 27, 2019 12:55
Letlhakane station commander, Michael Maphephu told The Monitor that the rising sexual assault cases in his policing area might be as a result of lack of public education.
Maphephu said last week that their station recorded a case in which a 28-year-old man raped a 51-year-old woman.
He said during the Easter Holidays, a 24-year-old man of Mopipi was arrested in connection with the brutal murder of his 23-year-old girlfriend of the same village.
In another incident within his jurisdiction, the police boss stated that a 51-year-old woman of Mmatshumu was last Friday raped by an unknown assailant while out herding her goats.
In another sexual assault case an alleged paedophile,
Oscar Marumo faces five counts of defiling schoolgirls from Motsumi Junior Secondary School. Maphephu revealed that his police station was also handling a case involving a 19-year-old boy of Tawana ward, who is facing one count of defiling his 15-year-old girlfriend.
They are also probing the notorious three-man horse riding gang at Mmatshumu, who allegedly gang-raped a 28-year-old woman of the same village recently.
Maphephu said that since the beginning of 2019 they recorded 30 cases of rape, nine cases of defilement and three cases of murder.
He said they have realised that people in their policing area are not aware of their rights and responsibility towards sexual offences that take place in their homes. “People in the outskirts inclusive of Letlhakane do not know what rape is, or what defilement is. Some of them are not even aware of the consequences of such illegal acts,” he said.
Maphephu added that they are not aware that one’s partner can sexually assault them after being intoxicated or one’s family member can take advantage of a minor, as it seems normal to some of the communities in those areas.
He said that after realising the continuity in misconduct in the area they have started public education on defilement, rape, murder and other criminal offences.
The police boss further said that they have partnered with social workers and the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Culture Development and mobilised a youth committee mandated to fight sexual assault in their policing area.
University of Botswana social work lecturer, Kgomotso Jongman said parents are the strongest influence on their children. Jongman noted that as a result after observing what their parents do they rapidly copy and execute it.
He said that when children grow up in an environment where defilement and rape are normal, they end up perpetuating such behaviour because they never witnessed any form of punishment towards the wrongdoer.
Jongman added that since in most cases the sexual offenders go unpunished, the offence becomes normal in the eyes of the children.
“For example when a girl-child sees her mother being abused and (the mother) does not report the matter, she is going to grow up feeling that it is fine to be abused because no action was taken against the culprit,” he said.
He added that some children in the same environment could develop resilience because it does not mean that when one grows up in a toxic surrounding, they will also end up being toxic. Jongman emphasised that public education is very crucial on issues pertaining to sexual assault so that people can be able to differentiate between right and wrong.
“We need to teach people in rural areas so that we can create public awareness on the impact of sexual abuse and protect them because some individuals are clueless about such criminal conduct,” he said.
He encouraged the authorities to emphasise the public education more on family law.