southcapenet | Apr 16, 2013
Cape Town – Police have fired a captain
for turning away a woman who had wanted to lodge a complaint against a Mossel
Bay policeman she accused of raping her.
The woman said she had been raped by a
reservist inside the trauma room of KwaNonqaba’s satellite station at
Herbertsdale on February 15 when she went to lodge a complaint of domestic
violence.
The captain is the second officer to be
sacked in the case.
Earlier, a 52-year-old police reservist
alleged to have raped the woman was fired after an internal disciplinary
hearing, and is facing a criminal charge of rape, said Moses Dlamini, spokesman
for the Independent Police Investigative Directorate.
The woman said when she reported the
rape at the same station the following day, the captain “dismissed her claims
as not serious and failed to institute criminal proceedings against the
suspect”, said police spokesman Andrè Traut.
After instituting disciplinary
proceedings against the captain in February, provincial commissioner General
Arno Lamoer on Monday confirmed the findings of a disciplinary panel to dismiss
him.
Asked to name the captain, Traut
refused, saying the dismissal was an internal matter which the captain could
appeal against.
Sharon Messina, from NGO Women on Farms
Project, said women routinely faced difficulties in reporting domestic violence
to police. “Women say that when they go to the police station to report
domestic abuse the police say that if nothing has happened, they can’t do
anything,” said Messina.
She said women often feared being
targeted for simply reporting cases to the police.
Cape Times
http://thegremlin.co.za/mossel-bay-news/wordpress/2013/04/16/captain-fired-over-ignored-rape-charge/
