While people were happily celebrating during the festive season, crimes were also perpetrated against women and children that spoiled the blissful mood.
According to WO Ishmael Mohutsiwa, there were disturbing incidents of rape during the festive season.
‘On 21 December, three men forced a 17-year-old teen girl into the bushes in Matlwang village and took turns raping her. She was also assaulted with a broken bottle. In Ikageng, on the same day, a 46-year-old woman was forced into the suspect’s room and raped. Two days before Christmas, a suspect was arrested after he was caught in the act of raping a non-verbal 14-year-old teen girl at knifepoint in a shack at Matlwang village. A 38-year-old suspect was arrested,’ he said. According to him, a pregnant 17-year-old girl was raped in Baipei, Promosa at 03:00 on Boxing Day morning (26 December). The girl says she was on her way home from her sister’s place. While she was walking, an unknown man offered her a lift, drove her from a pub to a garage and, then, to his home where he subsequently raped her. The suspect took her to a clinic after she started bleeding and she was transferred to a hospital. A 32-year-old man has been arrested.