Posted by Memory Grace on Saturday, August 1, 2009,
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ICD probes holding cell rape
26/08/2008 21:41 - (SA)
Johannesburg - The Independent Complaints Directorate is
investigating a case in which a woman was raped after police officials
placed her in a holding cell occupied by four men. The woman, 19, was detained at the Transvaal Road police station in Kimb... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, July 30, 2009,
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Just Detention International
to Testify at House Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing
Washington,
DC, July 7, 2009. The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) has stimulated
significant advances in the effort to end sexual violence in detention,
particularly with the recent release of binding national standards addressing
this type of abuse. Despite such progress, however, further action is needed to
ensure inmate safety.
At a hearing tomorrow, July 8, before the Ho... | Continue reading ...
Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, July 30, 2009,
Survivors Vindicated After 13
Year Legal Struggle in Michigan
Dear Friends,
Just Detention
International (JDI) applauds the decision by the Michigan Department of
Corrections to settle a class action lawsuit brought by more than 500 female
prisoners who were sexually assaulted in Michigan prisons. The case has been
going on for more than 10 years -- with the state previously refusing to take
responsibility for the rampant abuse in its facilities, even after los...
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Posted by Memory Grace on Wednesday, January 28, 2009,
Johannesburg - Overcrowding was one of the worst problems faced by prison authorities in Gauteng, according to provincial commissioner Zacharia Modise who testified before the Jali commission on Wednesday.
Modise told the commission, which began the first day of its public hearings on Wednesday as part of its investigation into corruption at prisons countrywide, that Gauteng prisons were severely overcrowded.
"We have the capacity to accommodate 25 242 prisoners, but the unlock as of Mo... | Continue reading ...
Posted by Memory Grace on Wednesday, January 28, 2009,
20/03/2003 22:59 - (SA)
Cape Town - Their evening meal is served at 14:00. If they are sick, they are given a Panado - no matter what the illness. Their visitors may spend three minutes with them.
This is a glimpse at the lives of some inmates in South African prisons as outlined in the Law Society of South Africa's latest report on conditions in the country's prisons.
The report was handed to minister of correctional services Ben Skosana on Thursday.
Seventy lawyers visited prisons acr... | Continue reading ...
Posted by Memory Grace on Wednesday, January 28, 2009,
23/05/2003 12:42 - (SA)
Cape Town - The threat of long prison sentences is not necessarily a deterrent for people thinking about committing a crime.
This is according to South Africa's inspecting judge of prisons, Judge Johannes Fagan, who says longer sentences are resulting in more overcrowded prisons and less scope for rehabilitation.
"It is the certainty of apprehension and punishment, rather than the severity of the sentence, that is the real deterrent," he states in his inspectorat... | Continue reading ...
Posted by Memory Grace on Wednesday, January 28, 2009,
22/06/2004 08:04 - (SA) Cape Town - Prison terms in South Africa are increasingly becoming longer, probably because trespassers are becoming more violent or because there are more serial perpetrators than before. According to the Institute of Security Studies (ISS), these are some of the reasons why the country's prisons are so full. Offenders serving sentences of more than 20 years have increased from 1 885 in 1995 to 7 885, which constitutes an increase of 76%. Offenders serving sentences o... Continue reading ...
Posted by Memory Grace on Wednesday, January 28, 2009,
19/03/2003 21:13 - (SA) Cape Town - A total of 1 443 prisoners died in South Africa's jails last year, Correctional Services minister Ben Skosana said on Wednesday. In a written reply to a parliamentary question, he said 1389 of these had been "natural deaths", and 54 prisoners had "died as a result of unnatural deaths". Replying to a separate question, he said there had been four cases of sodomy and one of rape reported to the authorities in South African prisons during the same period. Continue reading ...
Posted by Memory Grace on Tuesday, January 27, 2009,
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Cell rape hell before wedding
09/03/2008 20:22 - (SA)
Willem Pelser, Rapport
Polokwane - It's the greatest fear of every law-abiding citizen: you land in a police cell without good re... | |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Tuesday, January 27, 2009,
Man cries as he tells of rape
05/06/2008 09:09 - (SA)
Liela Magnus, Beeld
Pretoria - A man, 52, cried in the Pretoria High Court while he told how inmates in a police cell raped him. ...
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
15/06/2004 13:14 - (SA)
Cape Town - Newly appointed Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour committed himself on Tuesday to a "radical" transformation of the correctional system with the emphasis on rehabilitation.
Introducing debate on his budget vote in an extended public committee of the National Assembly, he also mooted the possibility of making rehabilitation programmes for offenders compulsory.
Balfour said he was convinced correction and rehabilitation was the only way to ... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
29/06/2004 13:52 - (SA)
Cape Town - Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour said on Tuesday he was concerned about the increasing number of young people committing crimes.
Introducing debate on his budget vote in the national council of provinces, he said more than 73 000 young people in the "prime of their lives" were in prisons, with 26 781 between the ages of 18 to 25 years awaiting trial.
"Some may indeed be there due to the lack of alternative facilities for children awaitin... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
06/07/2004 08:35 - (SA)
Cape Town - Inspecting Judge of Prisons Hannes Fagan has painted a bleak picture of South Africa's jails and claims that four out of every 1 000 people are behind bars.
In a report released on Monday, Fagan said: "Our prisons are bursting at the seams. There is room for 114 787 prisoners, but 187 640 are squashed inside."
He said the overcrowding, at best, was problems with food, health, exercise, stress levels and rehabilitation.
"At worst, prisoners are dehuman... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
06/07/2004 08:35 - (SA)
Cape Town - Inspecting Judge of Prisons Hannes Fagan has painted a bleak picture of South Africa's jails and claims that four out of every 1 000 people are behind bars.
In a report released on Monday, Fagan said: "Our prisons are bursting at the seams. There is room for 114 787 prisoners, but 187 640 are squashed inside."
He said the overcrowding, at best, was problems with food, health, exercise, stress levels and rehabilitation.
"At worst, prisoners are dehumanised, ...
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
04/08/2004 12:55 - (SA)
Cape Town - For over three months, some 25 000 accused have been in prison in South Africa awaiting trial, and some have been there since 1996.
"Part of the Bill of Rights contained in the Constitution says that there should be no undue delay in concluding criminal trials. However, the reality is that these unsentenced prisoners often spend 23 hours of the day in a cell, with no rehabilitation, no work and no recreation," said Gideon Morris, a director of the Judicial ...
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
02/08/2005 10:09 - (SA)
Pittsburgh - A man who spent 19 years behind bars for a rape he didn't commit was released from prison after new tests of DNA evidence cleared him.
Friends and family broke into applause on Monday when a county judge dismissed charges against Thomas A Doswell. About 30 minutes later, Doswell walked out of the county jail a free man - expressing thanks, not bitterness.
"I'm thankful to be home," he told The Associated Press from his mother's house. "I'm thankful j... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
2005 SA
Johannesburg - The department of health acknowledges in a new national policy document that it has failed victims of sexual offences.
This includes shortcomings in the provision of antiretroviral medicine (ARM) to rape victims, incompetent doctors and the lack of long-term psychological support for all victims of sexual offences.
"We are sorry about this," Siyani Marima, a director in the department's directorate for children's and women's health, said on Wednesday in Johannesburg.
Mar...
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
11/08/2005 10:21 - (SA)
Johannesburg - There are many male rape victims, but stereotyping often prevents them from reporting these offences to the police.
Luke Lamprecht of the Teddy Bear Clinic made this statement on Wednesday on the first day of a mini-conference about the amendment bill on sexual offences, which has been dragging on for the past seven years.
In terms of the present Sexual Offences Act, men cannot be raped. Offenders who sodomise men against their will are at present charge...
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
29/11/2005 16:50 - (SA)
Cape Town - The government must change the definition of rape to recognise the male-on-male version, said the Democratic Alliance on Tuesday.
"It is an absolute disgrace that a Swiss citizen has got away with a virtual tap on the wrist for raping a South African boy, simply because the definition of rape does not include male-on-male rape," said DA MP Mike Waters.
In 1999, the law commission argued for a gender-neutral definition of rape, but six years on it has ... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
25/07/2006 17:34 - (SA)
Pretoria - The present common law definition of rape is "archaic" and has resulted in inadequate protection for victims of sodomy and discriminatory sentences, a Pretoria High Court judge says.
Judge Natvarial Ranchod on Tuesday declared the common law definition of rape unconstitutional as it currently stood and extended the definition of rape to include anal penetration.
His ruling also brings male rape into the ambit of rape.
Ranchod was asked to rule on the c... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
23/01/2007 21:56 - (SA)
Johannesburg - A 17-year-old who is on parole appeared in Ermelo magistrate's court on Tuesday charged with raping six teenage boys, said Mpumalanga police.
Superintendent Abie Khoabane said the youth took the teenagers captive in Lothair outside Ermelo on Monday while they were collecting wild fruit in a field.
"He threatened them with a knife and sodomised them. When he was done satisfying his sexual urges, he left the bleeding boys alone in the field," said Kh... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
Rustenburg - Three awaiting-trial prisoners accused of indecently assaulting a 24-year-old inmate in police holding cells appeared in Mmabatho magistrate's court on Wednesday, said North West police.
Captain Mabel Mosidi said Daniel Seleke, Victor Ramorokwane and Victor Motwe appeared on charges of indecent assault. The case was postponed to April 26.
They are accused of sodomising another inmate repeatedly between 23:00 on Sunday and 06:00 on Monday in the Mafikeng police cells.
Two ... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
10/02/2004 21:16 - (SA)
Pretoria - Inbred homophobia and a lack of training were behind insensitive treatment sometimes meted out to male rape victims in jail, the Jali Commission of Inquiry into prison mal-administration heard on Tuesday.
Prison psychological services director Dr Lorinda Bergh testified she found it startling that no policy had been developed to protect homo- and transsexual men in jail.
"There should be no discrimination against any person, but even though that is the polic...
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
Pretoria - An Mpumalanga teenager is waiting for the results of HIV tests after he was molested and raped in a cell a few metres from police officers.
The story of the 15-year-old boy who was held in the Amsterdam police cells in Mpumalanga for allegedly stealing a watch and liquor worth R500, unfolded in the Pretoria High Court in a case against the minister of safety and security on Monday.
The application came after a magistrate in Amsterdam ruled numerous times that the boy had to b... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
12/06/2003 08:33 - (SA)
Commission told how inmate played doctor
Inmates get a helping hand?
Leeuwkop prison sex scandal exposed!
Adriaan Basson , Beeld
Johannesburg - An inmate of Leeuwkop Maximum Security Prison near here "accidentally" broke the television in his cell. The next morning, he was found hanging lifeless from a rope in solitary confinement.
This came to light on Wednesday when Leeuwkop inmate David Nkuna testified before the Jali commission about mysterious deaths in solit... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
Pretoria - Warders at Pretoria's local prison seemed to have a "bizarre fascination" with gay sex, a former prisoner told the Jali Commission into prison corruption on Wednesday.
Former inmate Louis Karp named the warders he claimed had made his stay in jail a misery one by one. The warders all had to stand up in front of the commission and identify themselves.
Karp spent almost two years in jail while awaiting trial on a car theft charge, only to be released after receiving a suspended... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
05/02/2004 14:00 - (SA)
Pretoria - Former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock and Pretoria local prison head Nick Baloyi were accused on Thursday of fabricating evidence to discredit a witness before the Jali Commission of inquiry into prison mismanagement.
Evidence leader Graham Barlow told the commission Baloyi had been accused of asking a prisoner to give false testimony to disprove the evidence of Louis Karp.
This prisoner, a former policeman, was allegedly helping prison warders dra... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
05/02/2004 15:35 - (SA)
Pretoria - Penis size came under scrutiny on Thursday when the Jali Commission of Inquiry into prison maladministration probed claims by a former inmate that he was forced to perform oral sex on a warder through a window.
Joe Mokwana, for the accused warder Thokozane Nxumalo, told the commission it would have been an impossible feat for his client to get his penis through that particular window.
The narrow window started chest height off the ground, had a vertica... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
09/02/2004 12:11 - (SA)
Pretoria - The head of Pretoria Local Prison, Nico Baloyi, denied on Monday having colluded to fabricate evidence to mislead the Jali Commission of Inquiry into prison maladministration.
"I wish to state on record that I am being wrongly accused," Baloyi told commission chair Thabane Jali, and pledged his full co-operation with the probe.
Evidence leader Graham Barlow last week told the commission that Baloyi had been implicated in an alleged attempt to fabricate... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
09/02/2004 14:30 - (SA)
Pretoria - Two very different worlds collided briefly in the Pretoria High Court on Monday when some of the accused in the Boeremag treason trial came to hear a transvestite testify on his alleged rape in prison.
Two of the Boeremag accused and the wife of another were seen briefly in the eighth-floor courtroom where the Jali Commission of Inquiry is holding its public hearings.
It was later established that the Boeremag trial adjourned at 11:0 for about three ho... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
10/02/2004 14:51 - (SA)
Pretoria - A Pretoria Local Prison doctor admitted on Tuesday that rape among inmates was "very common", and measures to deal with it were inadequate.
Giving evidence before the Jali Commission of Inquiry into corruption and maladministration in prisons, Dr Kobeli Khomari was questioned at length about the lack of support structures for raped prisoners. Khomari agreed this amounted to a callous disregard for the rights of victims.
Khomari, a part-time doctor at t... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
11/02/2004 14:46 - (SA)
Pretoria - A senior Correctional Services health official acknowledged on Wednesday there was a wide gap between policy developed for the treatment of rape victims in jail and its actual implementation.
Health care services director Maria Mabena conceded that Correctional Services health care officials were sometimes not informed of such policies.
"I acknowledge there is a gap that needs to be looked at," she testified before the Jali commission of inquiry into p... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
11/02/2004 16:19 - (SA)
Pretoria - Consensual sex between male prisoners was still classified under the old offence of sodomy, the Jali Commission of Inquiry into prison mal-administration heard on Wednesday.
Evidence would be led before the commission that a provision to this effect still existed in a policy of the correctional services department, evidence leader Graham Barlow said on Wednesday.
And the provision was still being administered - with two Pretoria prisoners charged only ... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
16/02/2004 17:14 - (SA)
Pretoria - There was currently no means of protecting awaiting-trial prisoners from rape in jail, the Jali Commission of Inquiry into prison mal-administration heard on Monday.
"You can get a guy who stole a bread because he was hungry with a serial rapist in one cell," Pretoria local prison social worker Helena du Toit testified.
To rectify this, she said a system should be introduced of classifying unsentenced inmates into different categories - as was done with ... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
18/02/2004 15:13 - (SA)
Pretoria - A convicted rapist recounted on Wednesday how he was repeatedly violated in the Pretoria Central Prison.
"I need assistance as I am now sick and these prisoners who sodomised me are all released," John Ngwako said in an affidavit presented in Pretoria to the Jali Commission of Inquiry into prison maladministration.
In the document, Ngwako claimed he was sodomised by three fellow inmates one after the other in October 2002. This happened in a cell on on... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
Maartens, a former Pretoria Local Prison inmate, testified on Tuesday that he was repeatedly raped between November 2001 and January the following year while awaiting trial.
He claimed he had suffered from a serious infection resulting from a venereal disease he contracted from the rapes.
Maartens was asked by Benedict Ndaba, for warders Richard Makhanya and Moses Malisa, why his allegations against them were not contained in his original affidavit.
Among other things, he claimed he had to pa...
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
25/02/2005 08:45 - (SA)
Pietermaritzburg - A 29-year-old Chatsworth man who allegedly contracted the HI-virus after being sodomised at Westville Prison in 1998, is suing Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour for more than R4m.
According to the particulars of claim, the man was only in prison because he had not yet paid his R500 bail after being arrested for theft.
While in prison from November 25 to November 29, he was assaulted and sodomised by one or more of the prisoners aft... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
STRUGGLE IN CELL FOR SURVIVAL
HUNTER ASSULTED, THREATENED WITH RAPE
A hunting expidition turned into a nightmare for an ex-policeman when he was arrested for crimen injuria and placed in a crowded cell for the weekend with people who assualted him and wanted to rape him.
Mr Sakkie van der Mescht (37) from Rustenburg, Northwest, is said to have been assualted repeatedly. He claims he was stabbed in the head with a knife and another sharp object. His cellmates also tried to rape him, but he ... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
Oudpolisieman se sel-helJul 23 2008 10:27:36:783PM
Linda de Beer
’n Jaguitstappie het in ’n nagmerrie ontaard vir ’n oudpolisieman toe hy weens crimen injuria ’n naweek lank in ’n vol sel aangehou is met mense wat hom aangerand het en wou verkrag.
Mnr. Sakkie van der Mescht (37) van Rustenburg, Noordwes, is na bewering herhaaldelik in die selle aangerand. Hy beweer hy is onder meer met ’n mes en nog ’n skerp voorwerp in die kop gesteek. Sy selmaats het hom ook probee... | |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
By Tania Broughton and Zukile Majova
He stood in the dock, face in his hands, crying uncontrollably, a broken man unable to speak.
Arrested for fraud, he had spent just one night in the awaiting-trial section of Westville Prison where he had been sexually assaulted by other prisoners.
His family waited outside the courtroom unable to bear his trauma. His attorney told the magistrate about the attack and the court ordered that he be kept in isolation.
When he appeared in court again later ... |
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
Cape Town - Confusion and a lack of any clear policy to deal with the sexual interaction of prisoners made it difficult to prevent the rape of inmates in South Africa's prisons, parliament's correctional services portfolio committee heard on Tuesday.
Briefing the committee about gangs and sexual violence in the country's prisons, researchers from the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) said the department of correctional services' 2002 anti-rape strategy had not yet fil...
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Posted by Memory Grace on Thursday, January 22, 2009,
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African prison gangs are using HIV infection as punishment, ordering gang members carrying the AIDS virus to rape disobedient inmates in a ritual known as "slow puncture," officials said Thursday.
A spokesman for the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons confirmed that the new practice first came to light about six months ago and was believed to be spreading.
The inspectorate's director Gideon Morris told a government commission on Wednesday that the rape would... |
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