About 20 officers from Manenberg police station have completed a course on how to treat rape survivors.
The two-day workshop, led by Bajija Jacobs and Nosipho Fuzile from Rape Crisis Athlone, was held at the Great Commission Church in Formosa Road, Heideveld.
Police officers were trained harshly to deal with murders, robberies, and other crimes, but they were not trained to handle sex crimes with sensitivity and they needed to learn how to prevent causing secondary trauma for rape survivors reporting the crime, said Ms Jacobs.
During the workshop, she explained to the officers that rape survivors had the right to ask to speak with a female officer in a safe space. They were also entitled to transport compensation to get to court. Officers should also use the term “rape survivor” instead of “rape victim”, she said.
She dealt with various forms of sex crimes, including bestiality and necrophilia as well the various forms of rape: marital rape, statutory rape, compelled rape, gang rape, gang-related rape (when you are forced to rape someone to become part of the gang), acquaintance rape and stranger rape.
Explaining statutory rape, she said a child aged 11 or younger could not consent to sex under any circumstances: “If you are 12 years old, your boyfriend cannot be older than 14. The person you have sex with can’t be more than two years older than you. When you are 16, the person you have sex with must be 16 and older, not younger.”
She added that many officers did not know that rape could occur in a marriage.
Ms Fuzile said that the course also tackled myths about sexual crimes such as the notion that the rape survivor could be blamed for the way they had dressed.
She also explained the three different types of sex crimes: rape was when penetration occurred, sexual assault was when someone touched you inappropriately, and sexual harassment was when someone engaged in unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature.
“We wanted SAPS to get this training so they can be more empathetic and sympathetic toward rape survivors,” she said.
The head of visible policing at Manenberg police station, Colonel Sedrick Hermanus, said the officers needed the training so they could become sensitised to sexual crimes and not treat them like any other crime.
“Some officers lack sympathy for rape victims because they are trained so harshly. This idea of training officers is part of our plan and came from our gender-based violence desk. We started off six months ago and so far trained 110 neighbourhood members through these workshops,” he said.