Raphah is a service centre dedicated to offering a place of refuge to the destitute.
However, recent events necessitated that the centre’s management team had to expel one of the residents, as he assaulted Sonja Luus’s son, Duncan Smith.
“After six previous assaults, how much more could we take? What if he had hurt a child? For the safety of our other residents, we had to have him removed from our premises,” said Mrs Luus, co-founder of Raphah.
The assault on took place on Monday, January 25, shortly after 7pm at Raphah’s kitchen.
“The resident arrived an hour late for dinner and became completely outraged and out of control when he could not get in the front of the line for food. He then threw his plate at Duncan, as well as other plates of food that were on the counter,” Mrs Luus said.
Broken plates and food were strewn across the kitchen floor, and Duncan attempted to defend himself before trying to run into Raphah’s courtyard, searching for help.
In the attempted escape, the enraged resident hit Duncan on the side of his face with the lid of a steam pot. It was then that Pastor Gerd Luus, Duncan’s father, ran to his aid.
The attacker was taken to Madadeni Provincial Hosptial, and was later referred to a psychiatric facility in Durban.
“He has Personality Conduct Syndrome, something we did not know about when we took him in three years ago. During his time with us, he attacked six other residents and we have always helped him out of a sense of love, but it has not helped,” Mrs Luus said.
She said after the attack, she had posted a photograph of what her son looked like on social media with information of what had happened.
“I did not do it to break him down, but people need to know about the difficulties we daily face with some of the people we try to help. I just want people to understand how difficult this type of work is,” Mrs Luus concluded.
