DURBAN - 43 YEAR OLD WOMAN DRUGGED AND RAPED!

A 43-year-old Durban woman has spoken out about her horrifying experience when she escaped from a man’s home and walked 5km after having been drugged and raped.
Her ordeal started when she was taken from a restaurant north of Durban where she drank a glass of wine.

“I went to a bar and restaurant to meet a friend who messaged me that she couldn’t get there because she could not find a babysitter,” the woman said.

She contacted The Independent on Saturday after reading about a report in last week’s edition about a teenage schoolgirl who had been allegedly drug-raped at a party in the Highway area.

The woman told of how she finished a glass of wine she had ordered at the restaurant and then woke up, bruised and bleeding, in her assailant’s bed with murky memories of two men.

She said one asked her, in an aggressive manner and using foul language, who she was and where she thought she was.

“He told me he saw I had been in need of help and had brought me home. Then he told me to make sure I did not get pregnant.”

The woman said two men had been involved.

“I wish I would not remember these two men. I keep seeing their faces in my memory.”

She said she gathered her clothes that lay scattered on the floor, escaped from the home and walked 5km to the restaurant where she had left her car.

There staff told her they recalled seeing a group come and chat to her, and that very shortly afterwards she had appeared to be very drunk.

To her disgust, the restaurant’s closed-circuit television system had not been working at the time of the incident.

She said that she had spent R16 000 on HIV testing and gynaecological appointments, “putting me in financial trouble”, and had been unable to go to work in the state she was in.

“It took three days to come down from the drugs they fed me,” she said.

She added that she had not been to the police, “as many women wake up too late and (don’t go) out of fear, among many other reasons”. The incident happened six weeks ago.
Now she plans to start a support group for other victims.

Drug rape is closely linked to the partying, alcohol and drug scene, as well as to robberies.
At the Careline Care Centre in Assagay, a woman spoke about how she had been fed a drink spiked with brake fluid by two men who owned the business where she was employed, at the age of 17.
“I woke up locked in a room three days later – naked. I had to break a window to get out. I was very traumatised, but I lived with a gangster and he and the gang did bad things to those men afterwards.”
She added that in her dark past she had herself spiked men’s drinks to rob them.

“I would go to a club, chat up a man, and then go home with him and put eye drops in his drink.
“Then I would call the group and they would rob him. Sometimes I did it on my own if I was not too threatened.”

Others at the centre said young women often used the excuse of having had their drinks spiked as a cover to conceal their own drug-taking from their parents.

“Drugs are so the norm today,” they said. “If guys can’t get a girl, they can go to house parties and raves and get one through drug rape.”

In uMhlanga, John Buswell, of the organisation Rape Wise, said there were two spikes in the drug-rape season: the private-school holidays and the government-school holidays
.
Nationally, the organisation dealt with up to 600 drug-rape cases a year, he said.

He also said more disposable income among township-dwellers had led to drug rapes in those areas, whereas in the past high levels of alcohol consumption had been behind most township rapes.

Buswell said drug rapes seemed to be perpetrated by men in their late twenties on victims in their early twenties, and by men in their late teens on victims as young as 11.

*Meanwhile, on Friday, August 21, the Aids Healthcare Foundation will lead its second Silent Protest in Durban.

The aim of the protest is to show solidarity with rape survivors and demand greater access to post-exposure prophylaxis after rape, in line with AHF’s 20x20 Campaign.

Another objective is to focus attention on the fact that rape is a far bigger problem than statistics provided by the SAPS indicate, according to the foundation.

In their quest to report improved crime statistics, there is a disincentive for the SAPS to accurately report violent offences such as rape, AHF said.

VIA - iol.co.za