Rape victim has long road to recovery – but we can help

TALI FEINBERG

To this extent, the SA Jewish Report has, with the help of attorney Ian Levitt, set up a trust fund to assist the survivor with the financial costs of therapy, and to raise funds for counselling for rape survivors in South Africa.

In an exclusive interview with the SA Jewish Report this week, the woman’s boyfriend, Dan* (not his real name) shared how a night that was meant to celebrate the start of his girlfriend’s birthday turned into a night of terror.

“My father is from Durban, and I have travelled in South Africa before. I spent four months travelling the length and breadth of the country a few years ago,” he says.

“So I wasn’t scared of crime coming to South Africa. We wanted to go there after we finished our army service. However, my mother was a little worried, and asked why I was taking my girlfriend Sarah* there when she had never travelled before,” he says. In spite of his mother’s concerns, they went ahead with their trip. “We paid for wild card and visited the national parks. We spent nine days in the Kruger [National Park].”

Dan had stayed at the Valley Views backpackers’ lodge before, and specifically chose to end the trip there on Sarah’s 22nd birthday as it advertised that it had a working oven, and he wanted to bake her a cake.

The couple met an Israeli friend at the lodge, but on the night of 31 August, the friend went to bed early. The couple stayed up until midnight to wait for her birthday, but at about five minutes to midnight, “they arrived”.

“They” were four armed men who silently cut through the fence of the lodge. “Each one was holding a real gun – as an Israeli, I know that they weren’t toy guns. They made us go to our tent, and took everything before forcing us through the fence out into a thorn field. There, they made us strip naked and threw our clothes on top of us. I felt like we might be buried, like I was a kidnap victim. I sat naked with three guns pointing at my head. They hit me with their guns.”

The intruders weren’t satisfied with what they had stolen, so they forced Dan to accompany them back to the lodge to rob more guests. “Sarah begged to come with us, but they made me tell her to ‘shut up’, and one man stayed behind with her. They pointed the gun at her body. He had been looking at her body the whole time, and I knew exactly what his intentions were,” recalls Dan. Forcibly separated, the couple didn’t know if they would see each other again. At that point, Sarah was raped.

Dan said the robbers made him knock on the door of an Italian couple with expensive cameras, and because the couple knew Dan, they opened the door for him. At this point, Dan told them what was going on, and begged them to co-operate for Sarah’s sake. While the thieves were in the room, “a stray gunshot went off”, which Dan thinks was a mistake. However, no other guests woke up.

Dan and the Italian couple were taken back to the field where they were all stripped naked and covered with their clothes again. The rapist was sitting on Sarah’s back. The three other perpetrators were pointing their guns at Dan, and the Italian couple took the opportunity to escape.

“The thieves debated what to do with us. They then began to back off, and told us to stand up. We ran as fast we could through the thorn field, got back through the fence, and no one knew sh*t about what had happened,” says Dan angrily.

His first priority was to get Sarah to hospital, and from there, the police were called. “It was horrible for her, especially when she had to describe the face of the man who raped her.” However, there was light in the darkness in the form of the people who helped the couple and took them in before they flew back to Israel.

Dan doesn’t regret visiting South Africa. He says he was “in the wrong place at the wrong time. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.” However, some members of his family in South Africa have chosen to emigrate because of the incident.

The Israeli knows that there is a great deal of anger about gender-based violence in South Africa, and that this incident could be a “tipping point for some”.

“I’m not happy that our story is the breaking point. The situation should be better,” he says.

At the moment, he says his girlfriend is “mentally up and down – not stable at all. I think it will take a year or two of recovery. She is seeing a specialist twice a week, and she has to travel far to get there. We are both staying with our parents. Her parents are helping where they can, but it’s a lot to cover. She hasn’t had an easy life.”

Orit Sulitzeanu, the executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, agrees that Sarah needs intense therapy twice a week, which over a year will cost about $11 000 (R162 000).

Dan admits that he, too, is in need of trauma counselling and physical and spiritual healing. At the time of writing, no arrests had been made in the case.

The couple is two of an estimated 10 500 Israeli tourists that visit South Africa each year, and two of the 30 000 to 40 000 Israelis who backpack overseas every year after their army service, according to research by Issta, Israel’s largest travel agency.

They weren’t the only Israeli tourists recently affected by crime. An Israeli tourist whose family was staying in Hermanus in the Western Cape during the last week of August described how their holiday home was robbed on the night they arrived.

“I heard noises, and saw the back door close. We were robbed of almost everything we had,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We were so traumatised that no one could sleep the next night, and we thank G-d no one was hurt. We think it was an ‘inside job’, as there is no way that the intruders could have got inside without help. I’m not saying ‘no’ to South Africa, but the next time we come, we will stay in gated communities rather than random homes.” Dan says that he will come back to South Africa one day, but only with his parents.

Sulitzeanu says that Sarah’s case is unique because in Israel, 90% of sexual-abuse cases are perpetrated by someone known to the victim. “At the same time, trauma is trauma. Your sense of security is destroyed. Recovery depends on many factors: gaining access to psychotherapy, having supportive friends and family, your own character, and the traumas from your past,” she says.

Going through rape and robbery in a country that isn’t your own makes it that much more difficult. “It will also take time for her to go back to work, which means she might lose out on income. People do recover, but they often have a ‘scar’. If the South African Jewish community wants to help, it would be extremely valuable. She needs it.”

*Not their real names

The SA Jewish Report is raising funds for therapy for the Israeli, as well as South African rape survivors.

Donations can be made to the following account:

Ian Levitt Attorneys Trust Account, Absa Bank, Rosebank Central Branch. Account number 4046253714. Reference: Israeli tourist.