Sunday Times, South Africa - December 5, 1999
Michael Schmidt and Victor Khupiso
"They treated my child as if she was a dog," Dinah Lerumo, 40, of KwaMhlanga, northeast of Pretoria, said this week of the justice system's failure to punish her dying daughter's alleged rapists. The case, which sprang to prominence in the wake of World AIDS Day on Wednesday, has generated an angry national debate. Despite the girl going to court as many as 17 times to face her alleged rapists, she died without once being able to testify against them.
A weeping Lerumo said: "The justice system favours criminals. My daughter was made to look as if she was responsible for what happened to her.
"I don't believe Felicia is resting in peace. It was her fondest wish to see those inhuman bastards behind bars."
Speaking through his spokesman, Paul Setsetse, Maduna offered his condolences to Felicia's family yesterday, saying: "The case must proceed and these guys must be brought to book if police and the prosecuting authority have the evidence that they committed the crime."
Meanwhile, the young men who allegedly gang-raped the girl near the Mamelodi Post Office while her friends watched New Year's fireworks two years ago - infecting her with HIV - threw a party to celebrate their freedom. They now roam Mamelodi streets taunting members of her family.
Felicia, 14 at the time of the rape, was visiting her grandmother in Mamelodi for the school holidays in 1997. She reported the rape immediately, but died of AIDS-related pneumonia 16 months later, on May 9 this year, a month short of her 16th birthday and before the trial of her alleged rapists could even begin.
Andr Weideman, the senior public prosecutor at the Pretoria Regional Court, admitted this week that there had been "about 16 or 17 adjournments" in starting the trial. The reasons for the delays are unknown as the charge sheet and the docket have gone missing from court.
Investigating officer Sergeant Danisa Sono said that although her case was ready to go to trial by January this year, it had been delayed once again. "I picked up Felicia and her family and brought them to court in February, but the child was so sick she had difficulty talking and she needed to be supported in order to walk," said Sono. "I pointed her out to the prosecutor sitting in the court and asked if the trial could be speeded up because the child was so ill. But it was postponed again and then I had to go on four months' maternity leave."
It was only after October 18, when the three accused were discharged for lack of a living victim to testify against them, that Sono found out that Felicia had died five months earlier.
Lerumo said: "They knew my daughter was sentenced to die, so they delayed it purposely."
The prosecutor in the case, Nicolene Muller, who was the regional court's most experienced prosecutor, retired from the Justice Department this week to go into private practice. She could not be contacted for comment. But Weideman said he "fully supported" Muller's decision to withdraw the case against the three: "I've got deep sympathy for the family, but I definitely can't proceed without the complainant.
"Although we have the girl's statement that she was raped by these men, we must have the complainant to testify that the sexual intercourse occurred without her consent."
Weideman said that not even the district surgeon's report that confirmed Felicia had been raped could implicate the three former accused. But Sono said: "How can I face Felicia's parents? . . . It makes it look as if the police failed, whereas we are not the prosecuting authority."
Advocate Thoko Majokweni, the national special director of public prosecutions for offences against women and children, has demanded that the docket be traced and handed to her. Yesterday, she swore to bring in tough new laws that would force rape suspects to undergo DNA and HIV tests in cases where it was vital to establish the link between the victim and the perpetrators by forensic means. "We can even think of charges like murder if we can prove they were aware they were HIV-positive . . . and the child was not positive before the rape," she said.
She said she would start working on changing the law on Tuesday when she meets the legal adviser to Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
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