An epidemic of rape

QACHA’S NEK – LURED to a veld under the guise of friendship, a young mentally disabled 18-year-old woman ended up enduring horrific sexual assault by multiple men that left her mortified.

The case is now before the Qacha’s Nek Magistrate’s Court where several young men have been convicted on rape charges.

Appearing in the same court was a 55-year-old man from Mpharane in Qacha’s Nek, accused of sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl from his village.

The two cases are a just a tip of the iceberg, as mounting cases of rape put Qacha’s Nek under the spotlight.

For the past seven months, the Qacha’s Nek magistrate’s court has heard at least one rape case almost every week. Police last year announced, without providing statistics, that Qacha’s Nek was recording the most cases of sexual assault, with perpetrators being mostly people close to the victims.

In the case of the mentally disabled 18-year-old woman, three young men and a boy – two of whom claimed to be boyfriends of hers – took turns to rape her last month.

The young men are Sello Mpela, 22, Lereko Mabusela, 19, and Mohloki Koatsi, 18, together with a 15-year-old boy from Mosafeleng village.

Witnesses told the court that Koatsi went to the victim’s home and asked her to accompany him to herd cattle in a veld.

Koatsi and Mpela told the court that they were boyfriends of the woman and that she agreed to go with Koatsi to the veld because of that relationship.

But a witness said while Koatsi and the victim were sitting in the fields, Mpela, Mabusela and the minor boy arrived and started to rape her one after the other.

A passer-by saw this and went to the woman’s home to report the incident. He also reported to the village chief.

The woman went back home and did not tell her parents about the ordeal, but bathed andcarried on ith her chores like nothing had happened, the court heard.

The chief called a public gathering to interrogate the young men. They denied raping her, claiming that it was consensual sex. The chief ordered his men to drive them to the police.

Even in court they were adamant that it was consensual sex.

Her mother told the court that the woman suffers from mental health issues, intimating that the young men could have taken advantage of the condition.

The men are awaiting sentence in the Qacha’s Nek prison, while the boy was released to his parents’ custody pending the completion of the case.

Appearing in the same court, Seabata Ntsane Ramabele from Mpharane in Qacha’s Nek who is 55-years-old was sentenced to 15 years in prison without an option of a fine for sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl from his village last month.

The court heard that Ramabele arrived at the girl’s residence and found her alone.

The court heard that the elderly man forced the girl to take off her clothes before rubbing his private part on the girl’s thighs.

A woman passing by saw the incident and sent an alarm to other members of the community.

The man was then taken to a police station before being hauled before the courts.

The same court is seized with the case of Hlomellang Seliane, 31, of TJ in Qacha’s Nek, who faces a charge of sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl from the same village.

Witnesses told the court that Seliane was caught red-handed while fondling the girl. The girl said this was not the first time the man was involved in such conduct.

All these cases were before Resident Magistrate ’Mampho Mokoena and prosecuted by Tsotang Maile.

Authorities and residents say the cases are tarnishing the image of Qacha’s Nek. Some of the cases are so gruesome that even locals are living in fear.

Take last year’s rape and murder of Nki Tlali, a 38-year-old mentally retarded villager in Motse-Mocha, just outside Qacha’s Nek town.

Her lifeless body was found by her relatives dumped by the road, naked.

Thabo Tlali, her brother, expressed sadness that there haven’t been any arrests in the matter.

“We are not happy as the Tlali family and we want justice for our sister,” he said.

Barely a year ago, the lifeless body of a two-year-old Matšeliso Ramolibeli was found in a donga on the slope of a mountain towering her village.

The toddler had gone missing two days earlier from her village of Ha-Sekake. She was under the care of her 75-year-old grandmother while the mother was at work in South Africa.

The toddler was playing with others in the village and when others went back to their homes, she was nowhere to be seen.

She was found by herdboys dumped at Lekhalong la Mosoke, some metres away from the village. The police’s preliminary probe found that the girl could have been raped and suffocated. A neighbour, a man in his 50s, was taken by the police for questioning in connection with the heinous crime.

Males are not spared the scourge, although they make a tiny minority of victims.

The horrific rape of a nine-year-old boy who was intoxicated before being sodomised by a 53-year-old Makhetha Sello of Ha-Mohlapiso in Qacha’s Nek is one of such cases in the district.

The court sentenced the man to only four years in prison for intoxicating two boys and raping one of them. The second boy managed to escape.

The first boy was so drunk that he could not run for his life and the man took advantage of his state to rape him at knife-point.

The court heard that the boy woke up in the morning with a painful backside and he could not walk properly.

The executive director of the Lesotho National Federation for the Disabled, Advocate Nkhasi Sefuthi, described “the high rate at which disabled women in this country are being raped and killed” as concerning.

“Cases like this are so many in Lesotho because in our country disabled people are taken for granted and whatever they say is not taken seriously,” Sefuthi said.

“This, as a result, gives the perpetrators the chance to rape disabled people knowing that people will not believe them when they report the cases,” he said.

Sefuthi said cases of sexual assault and murder of people with mental health related issues is worrying.

“The government should allow justice to be done to all people whether disabled or not,” said Sefuthi.

“We have many cases of women with disabilities who are being raped and killed, this is a big challenge in our country,” he said, adding that “this is happening time and again because women living with disabilities are easy targets to the perpetrators”.

“Even in court their evidence is taken for granted, it is still not easy for people living with disabilities to be given justice because of the stigma accompanying their disabilities.”

Dr Mahali Phamotse said it was sad that she has often come face-to-face with cases of women abuse and inequality in almost every ministry she has worked in.

“I started as a Minister of Education, and I saw reports of teachers raping their students flood in,” she said.

“I became Minister of Justice and it came to my attention that 90 percent of offenders are on sexual offence charges and when I was the Minister of Gender the statistics were horrific.”

“This is very worrying and some level of commitment is required from all of us to put a stop to women abuse and inequality,” she said.

According to a United Nations study conducted in 2015 Lesotho has the highest rape rate in the world, with 61 percent of women reporting having experienced sexual violence at some point in their lives.

The country had a rate of 88.6 rape cases per 100 000 inhabitants in 2011, according to a UN report.

Lesotho has the sixth highest murder rate in the world, according to a recent World Population Review report.

The global average murder rate is seven per 100 000 people, found the report, and Lesotho had a rate almost six times higher at 41.25.

The Lesotho Correctional Service (LCS) last year confirmed that the reformatory is mostly populated by young rapists, the majority being initiation school graduates or herd boys.

The LCS said ignorance of the law is another problem. She said most bemused inmates claimed they were not even aware that their actions were illegal when they committed the offences.

Another Principal Rehabilitation Officer, Nemase Fobo, said some inmates are men who would have abducted women in what they believe to be a customary elopement.

Others commit rape due to sad “childhood experiences,” said Fobo.

Fobo said most of sexual assault or rape cases that are recorded are often of men aged between 18 and 35-years-old.

Thooe Ramolibeli