South Africa's largest ever rape study - disturbing statistics

Of every 25 men accused of raping a child or adult woman, 24 walk free - and one in every eight rape suspects is under the age of 17.

These are just some of the disturbing statistics that have emerged from South Africa's largest ever rape study, which has exposed how local police and justice authorities are failing rape survivors.

The study, which has tracked 2 068 rape cases reported in 70 Gauteng police stations through the justice system from 2003 to the present, is supported by the SAPS and is due to be released by the Tshwaranang Legal Resources and Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation on Monday.

The Tracking Justice study's findings show that:

• Only 4,1 percent of reported rape cases resulted in a conviction.
  
  
• One out of every 10 child rape cases reported to the police resulted in a conviction.
  
  
• Half of all reported cases resulted in arrests, but only 42,8 percent were charged in court.
  
  
• One in five reported rapes resulted in a trial.
  
  
• One in three alleged rapists were granted bail.
  
  
• Of the 34 convicted rapists eligible for a life sentence, only four received a life sentence.
  
  
• More than a third of reported rape victims were under the age of 17, with children under the age of 7 making up 14,6 percent of all victims.

The Tracking Justice study also lays bare shoddy police work:

• More than a third of alleged rape victims withdraw their cases. Of these, the cases of one in five are quashed because police claimed they could not trace the alleged victim.
  
  
• The average number of attempts made by police to contact the alleged victim before declaring her untraceable was three. In some cases, no effort was made.
  
  
• Reports containing the results of DNA tests were available only in 2 percent of rape dockets, despite sexual assault evidence collection kits being collected in 67 percent of cases and sent to the police's laboratory for testing in 51 percent of cases.
  
  
• The suspect's blood is taken in only 8,2 percent of cases.
  
  
• In more than half of all rape dockets, the police official in charge had to repeatedly be urged to arrest the rape suspect. In nearly a third of such cases, the suspect disappeared by the time the police official involved attempted to arrest him.
  
  
• While police closed nine out of every 20 reported rape cases largely because the alleged perpetrator could not be identified or located, the study found that descriptions of the alleged rapist were absent from over three-quarters of all victims' statements.
  
  

The study comes just two months after National Prosecuting Authority head Mokotedi Mpshe admitted under oath that South Africa's justice system was failing its child rape victims.

"Instead of having made vast progress since 2000, dedicated (child rape) courts have declined in numbers; SAPS Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Units have been redeployed; trained forensic social workers employed by the police have become quite scarce; (some) magistrates have become obstructive; the system of district surgeons was abolished (giving rise to a loss of expertise); and the need for training of all remains, with language barriers exacerbating every identified issue," he said.

Police rape study results drown victims' hope - 27 Oct 2008