Making a Difference

 

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From Jenny Johnston In Johannesburg

AS SHE gazes out the window, you can't help but wonder what is going through her mind. You hope she is thinking about her latest Disney toy. Or lunch. Or her new blue sandals.

You press a yellow building block into her hand, just in case, praying that the colours she is carrying in her head will be bright enough to transcend the darkness of the real world out there.

Just over a year ago, this little girl was raped. It seems impossible. Her name is Thandiwe, she is 19 months old and today she radiates happiness.

Her laugh ricochets down the hallway as she plays peek-a-boo with her own reflection. She comes careering into the kitchen, clambering onto the knees of these visitors from London, eager to hold the pen and scribble on the notebook. She demands kisses, songs, attention. In return, she offers pure unadulterated trust.

She is still a baby, but when Thandiwe was just five months old she was cut open with a bottle, violated by two men, and left to bleed on a urine-stained bed in a seedy hotel.

We will probably never know why Thandiwe was raped. No one has been charged with the attack.

She could be just another victim of the explosion of sexual violence sweeping South Africa, a little girl who had the misfortune to be born in the rape capital of the world.

The statistics here defy belief. The BBC reports that a woman is more likely to be raped in Johannesburg than she is to learn to read. Another survey insists starkly that for a third of women in Johannesburg their first sexual experience will be a forced one.

Across South Africa there were 37,000 reported rapes of adults last year, and a staggering 21,000 child rapes. In some areas, like parts of Gauteng Province, the incidence of child rape outstrips adult rape.

But there could be an even more chilling explanation. Some believe that Thandiwe - and babies like her - are victims of the 'virgin myth', a bizarre belief that a man with Aids can be 'cured' if he has sex with a virgin. And the younger the better.

The myth has so gripped South African society, and the incidence of child rape become so commonplace, that the Government places posters in townships, warning that it is wrong.

Whatever the motivation, Thandiwe will bear the scars for the rest of her life. She has already had three operations and one day, those scars will have to be explained to her.

"She will ask," nods Thandiwe's foster mother Claudia Ford, 48, the woman she now calls Mummy.

"She has one scar on her tummy and she will want to know how it got there. There are those who say that I should never ever tell her the truth, but I don't believe in lies.

"One day I will tell her that a terrible thing happened when she was a baby. And I know that everything I do now will affect how she takes that news.

"That's why I am trying to give her a loving home, with lots of hugs. If you surround a child with love, they can cope with anything."

What is most shocking about Thandiwe's story is that it is not unusual. Yet such is the stigma attached to rape and child abuse that many communities simply refuse to acknowledge that it exists.

If many of Claudia Ford's neighbours and acquaintances had their way you would never hear of Thandiwe, or the crime that she has suffered. Yet her story offers a damning and horrifying glimpse into one of South Africa's darkest secrets.

Today, as the Cricket World Cup gets underway, the eyes of the world will turn towards a very different sort of South Africa - a place of lush cricket lawns and civilised sportsmanship. Millions have been spent convincing visitors to linger.

No one, however, will be drawing attention to this little girl's scars or the difficult questions they pose about a society where this can happen.

The truth is that South Africa is in the grip of a baby rape epidemic. Barely a day passes without the reported rape of an infant under one year of age. While the precise number of victims remains unknown. Police figures do not distinguish between the rape of babies and of 15 year olds, but it is not unheard of for police to investigate 20 cases of infant rape in a weekend.

Paediatric surgeon Graeme Pitcher - a man who wept as he performed emergency surgery on little Thandiwe, then fought to obtain drugs to protect her against the HIV virus - believes the virgin myth is "the only possible explanation" for the awful phenomenon.

"This is a distinct entity from paediatric rape," he says, pointing out that the perpetrators of the 11 baby rape cases he has studied do not fit the profile of paedophiles.

Over the past year, three cases of baby rape - including Thandiwe's - have been high-profile enough to force the issue onto the pages of the South African press. But until now, no mother has spoken out. Claudia, a trained midwife and university lecturer, is determined to do so.
The ferocity of the attack on Thandiwe shocked even Johannesburg.

On December 2, 2001, the police received a call from a public telephone. They arrived to find the baby screaming in agony, her mother drunk and confused. The 24-year-old had left the rented room she shared with Thandiwe to buy alcohol, leaving the baby in the care of two male friends. When she returned, there was little doubt as to what had happened.

Claudia had already read about the attack on Thandiwe when she visited friends working in the hospital treating her.
"I fell in love with her the minute I saw her," she recalls. "She was in a crib, under lots of blankets. When I walked in, she turned her head and I just saw these big black eyes peering out at me. I wanted to grab her and never let go.

"I thought my parenting days were over. I have three boys, all grown-up now. But when I heard she was destined for a children's home, I froze. I was going to offer this baby my home."

But Claudia's decision to welcome Thandiwe into her home wasn't simply a matter of the heart ruling the head. Her hushed conversations with the medical team made her only too aware that she was one of the few people who was qualified to cope.

Over the next few months, the baby would be facing at least three operations to repair the damage caused during the attack. Her pelvic floor had been so badly ripped that doctors feared she would die.

While her injuries healed, she would have to wear a tiny colostomy bag.

"I'd looked after women who had been ripped apart during childbirth. I knew the theory," explains Claudia. But the reality was something else.

"I cried a lot. It was the practical side that forced me to confront what had happened to her. When we were playing, or I was singing her lullabies, I could hide from the truth. But I had to rub olive oil and comfrey tea on her little private parts every day. That killed me, because there was no escaping how she had got those terrible injuries.

"Every time I had to change her colostomy bag, there would be tears running down my face. I couldn't do it without hurting her, and that was unbearable. No one can quite understand how I detested that bag changing routine. I had to pin her, spread-eagled under my legs and sing endless rounds of The Wheels On The Bus.

"And I wanted the men who did this to her to see what they had done."

Yet the physical tending was only a small part of the story. Night after night, she struggled to offer emotional comfort.

"Neglected children either withdraw or become hypervigilant. She was very alert, very aware of everything that was going on around her. In the beginning, she didn't sleep very deeply. She didn't cry during the day, but at night she would scream. It wasn't natural crying. She was reliving some trauma.

"That was terrible. I'd just sit there and hold her and rock her, and smother her with kisses and tell her everything was alright.
"For the first six weeks, I went mad trying to find every expert I could on the internet. I looked up every site on infant trauma memory. I contacted six of the top 10 experts and had email conversations with them. But they were divided on how she would be permanently affected.

"Friends tell me that she won't remember the attack - but I'm not going to say that, reassuring as the thought might be.
"The only thing I can do is provide her with a wonderful home and surround her with love. Then we can cope with whatever comes." The whole family has had to learn to cope with this most difficult situation.

When Claudia, who is single, told her sons she was bringing a new baby into the home, they were not surprised. But the circumstances of her arrival shocked them to the core.

"I told my eldest son what had happened to her, and he was physically sick. He couldn't even talk about it, he was so horrified. But they have grown to love her so much. They are so protective."

Claudia is clearly thinking long-term. She talks of school, and university. She has changed the little girl's name - she now calls her Princess Moonbeam. And she makes no secret of the fact that she hopes to adopt her.

The men who raped Thandiwe are still free. Two suspects were picked up by police, but the case against them collapsed.