[Cape Town is rapidly becoming a hell hole to rival Johannesburg. I wonder if the massive influx of drugs from China might be helping to create this situation? Drug addiction among teenagers in the Cape is said to be climbing at the fastest rate on the planet. Jan]

As South Africa struggles to come to terms with the spate of horrific child rapes, assaults and murders, 37 more cases have been reported in the Western Cape in the past four days alone.

Provincial child protection unit head Jan “Blackie” Swart said 48 cases had been reported so far this month, 18 of them in the eastern metropole of the city since Friday.

This includes the murder and possible rape of Melissa Demas, 9, in Kraaifontein, and the attempted hanging of a two-year-old girl in Uitsig, Ravensmead home.

The baby is recovering in hospital.

‘The attacks on them are part of growing up as a child’
Swart said his team had been working around the clock and had arrested 19 people in connection with rapes, murder and assaults on children since last Friday.

“We are thankful adults are coming forward to report these cases. Children aged three and four are unable to report these crimes.

“Most of these child victims are under the impression that the attacks on them are part of growing up as a child.”

In the worst of this week’s cases in the Western Cape, a young girl’s naked, bloody body was found lying along the Old Paarl Road in Kraaifontein on Monday at 2pm.

Police spokesperson Wicus Holtzhausen said two residents walking home found the body of Melissa Demas, 9, of Scottsdene.

A plan to stage a huge human chain protest in the city
Indications were that she had been severely assaulted and possibly raped.

Holtzhausen said the girl’s parents had realised she was missing on Saturday night.

On Sunday morning they reported her missing to Kraaifontein police.

On Monday Kraaifontein police arrested a 16-year-old Kraaifontein boy in connection with the killing.

A 22-year-old mother and her two-year-old daughter are in stable condition in Tygerberg Hospital after the little girl was hanged with a tie against a wooden fence by her father, and the mother was stabbed in the left shoulder.

Child protection unit inspector Japhta Agust arrested a 24-year-old man, believed to be the woman’s boyfriend.

The incident happened on Sunday at 7.30pm in Connaught Street, Uitsig.

A 62-year-old Worcester man appeared in the Bellville magistrate’s court on Monday in connection with the rape of a six-year-old girl.

Allegations are that he abducted the girl from a house in Belrail Road, Bellville, on Friday at 6.30pm, carried her to a nearby parked car and raped her.

He is being kept in custody.

Unit members are searching for a man who allegedly raped a 10-month-old baby girl in Staal Court, Clarke’s Estate, on Saturday.

Meanwhile Ravensmead community worker Pedro Arends is heading a plan to stage a huge human chain protest in the city this week.

The protest would involve communities of Ravensmead, Elsies River and neighbouring areas afflicted by the bizarre trend gripping the country from the Northern Province to the Western Cape in recent weeks.

Elsies River community worker Harriet Manuel said she and residents in her neighbourhood had found it “unbearable” to watch attacks on children reported on national TV newscasts.

Source: Independent Online (IOL)
URL: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click…/p>