High Sinoville crimes stats not a true reflection of the situation, crisis centre says
“We have always said that the reports are not a true indicator of what is happening as a lot of adult women do not want to report and cases are not opened in a lot of the children’s cases reported at the centre,” CEO Colleen Strauss said.
An increase in sex-related crimes in the north of Pretoria recorded in the last three months of 2021 were not a true reflection of what was happening on the ground, the Sinoville Crisis Centre has said.
“We have always said that the reports are not a true indicator of what is happening as a lot of adult women do not want to report incidents and cases are not opened in a lot of the children’s cases reported at the centre,” CEO Colleen Strauss said.
This comes a week after police minister Bheki Cele released the third quarter crime statistics during a media briefing.
The station recorded an 18.2% increase in sexual offences, a 16.7% increase in rapes, and a 50.0% increase in sexual assaults.
A total of 113 sexual offences, seven rapes, and six sexual assaults were recorded.
During the same period, in the previous year, only 11 sexual offences, six rapes, and four sexual assaults were recorded.
Nationally, sexual offences decreased by 9%.
“Despite this drop, 11 315 people were raped between October and December 2021,” Cele said.
He explained that this translated to a decrease of 903 cases, compared to the 2020 period of reporting.
“All nine provinces recorded decreases in rape cases,” Cele said.
Despite the increase in the number of sex crimes that were recorded at the station, Strauss said a lot of hard work was put into ensuring cases were reported and investigated last year.
“In the past year, we did a lot of ground-breaking work with the police and the justice department in ensuring that cases are reported and investigated.
“So even though the number of incidents increased, it is not a true reflection but we are glad that victims are feeling empowered enough to step forward and report their cases,” she said.
Strauss said the centre could not do their work without an active partnership with the police as reports of crime had to go through them [the police].
She said that more had to be done to assist victims of these crimes.
“We should be asking ourselves what more we can do for victims to come forward. The crimes have always been there and the numbers have always been high, but the victims do not trust the system to come forward and report them.
“We feel that working with the justice department and SAPS we have created a platform where victims can come in, feel safe and report the cases then let it go further and be investigated,” Strauss said.
She further said that the main thing which would encourage victims to come forward was by creating safe spaces for victims and through harsher sentences for perpetrators of these criminal acts.
“We have done education, spoken to men not to rape and to women so what we can focus on now is creating safe spaces for victims to come in and report it and seeing harsher sentences for perpetrators of these offences,” Strauss said.
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