The story published in The Star and Pretoria News today, 6 June 2011 with the headline 'raped by the system' gives an incorrect impression that there are hundreds of rape kits uncollected by the police from Gauteng hospitals.
The story contains inaccuracies which cannot go unchallenged. It is stated as fact that Chris Hani Baragwanath has so many uncollected kits that they have run out of storage. This is untrue.
It is also stated that rape victims are referred to private hospitals because of backlogs in public hospitals. Again this is not true. Rape cases are treated as acute cases and are attended to immediately. There is no backlog and no person is referred to the private sector because medico-legal centres in public hospitals have the capacity to attend to cases immediately.
Centres in Gauteng attended to 10 000 sexual assault cases last year. The cases were either brought by the police or were self referrals by survivors themselves. Police do routinely collect kits in cases reported by them.
In instances of self referral, evidence is collected and survivors are given treatment before being advised to go report the alleged rape to the police. Where survivors follow the advice and open cases, police do come and collect specimens.
However there are instances where specimens from self referred survivors are not collected. In these instances it is assumed that survivors have not followed the advice and opted not to report the alleged incidents to the police.
It must be pointed out that even where advise is not followed, the cases are not as numerous as to be classified as 'hundreds'. Records indicate that there are only 29 specimens that have not been collected up to the end of May this year.
Medico-legal centre are cognisant of the fact that failure to collect even one specimen is a serious matter. It is for this reason that they cooperate with the police in the multidisciplinary forum that discusses rape cases. Discussions at these forums have led to the appointment of people who regularly collect specimens from the centres.
Enquiries:
Simon Zwane
Cell: 082 551 9892
