Schoolgirl in abduction, rape horror

"If only you had loved me," a girl was told before being raped and assaulted in a dirty backroom by her alleged stalker.

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Johannesburg - A high school girl was kept for more than 24 hours in a filthy back room at the weekend, where she was raped and injured repeatedly by a man who had allegedly been stalking her and two of her friends for weeks.

And as police hunt for the alleged rapist, the 18-year-old pupil fears for her life, as the man revealed he knows her current address and those of her friends and family.

Maria* was visiting her friend, Zinhle*, in Bezuidenhout Valley on Saturday, and upon leaving the home in the early evening, she spotted a man who she had seen two weeks before.

On their first meeting, the man had approached her while she was walking through the suburb, Maria said .

He told her he loved her, despite them having never met before. When she rebuffed his advances, he left her alone.

However, on Saturday, the man immediately came up to her, saying she was being “clever” with him, and grabbed her by the throat.

“I fainted, I felt like I was dying,” she said.

Some time later, she awoke in a small room, accompanied by the man who had attacked her. She realised that while she was passed out she had urinated, and her attacker began mocking her.

“What kind of 18-year-old pees themselves?” he jeered.

He then told her to spread her legs, and when she began crying and refused, he used the edge of a knife to stab her – making a shallow but painful wound.

Without any way to defend herself, the man raped her. After the rape, the man brandished the knife and told Maria: “You have three minutes to run for your life.”

She ran from the room, and managed to make it over a low neighbour’s wall and into the street, but it was already late at night, and she became incredibly frightened as she saw another man walking in her direction.

According to Maria, the alleged rapist caught up to her and used the knife to cut her arm again. When she began crying hysterically and apologising, he said, still holding the knife: “Let’s go back and stop fighting.”

She was taken back to the room, where he raped the teenager again. “If only you had loved me,” she was told.

“I didn’t ask you to love me,” she said in tears, prompting him to bang his hand on the wall of the room, telling her to shut up.

The ordeal continued until 3am on Monday, and each time she resisted, she sustained another wound to her body.

Eventually, he told her to get out of his home, and to make sure she didn’t tell the police, or else he would kill her and her family.

The threat was exacerbated by the fact that the same man had allegedly been sending WhatsApp messages to Zinhle and her cousin Thuli*, where he detailed what he knew about them and Maria.

In messages sent by the man to Zinhle, he flirts with her, and asks to meet her in person, with her refusing.

Ultimately, the conversations turned bizarre when the man wrote: “Meet me I will tell u everything u need to know,I mean (Maria) no harm… I know she schools in (name of school)… the mother is her in (Maria’s mother’s address), I know she snores at night when she sleep, and that she stayed in (Maria’s old address). I mean her no harm, can u meet me please. We talk u help me help here please,” he wrote.

When Zinhle heard about the rape, she confronted the man on WhatsApp, where he at first admitted he needed help: “can u at least tell me which police station are u going to, so I can meet u there to hand myself in, I don’t wanna run. Or cause trouble at home. I need to be arrested. I understand.

“What I did can not be reversed, I’ve never been like that before, all I know is I deserve all punishment coming to me, for I don’t deserve to be a human being.”

He later denied the incident and then began threatening to commit suicide before cutting contact with Zinhle.

Jeppe police spokesman Warrant Officer Richard Munyai confirmed a rape case had been opened on Monday morning, but did not comment on why police had not arrested the man despite knowing his address and phone number, saying the investigation was at a sensitive stage.

*Not their real names

**Comments have been closed to protect the identity of the minors mentioned in the article.

@ShainGermaner

shain.germaner@inl.co.za

The Star