GBV THE REALITY! PART 1

GENDER BASED VIOLENCE – THE REALITY!

The government is fully aware that with lockdown, Gender Based Violence has been on a massive increase. As they stated, the GBV call centre has alone received more than 120 000 calls in the last 3 weeks.

The reality though, is the government does not see GBV as a serious offence. Whilst we appreciate that there are various acts and forums that were put in place to safeguard the rights of the victims, these rights are pathetically enforced by the relevant authorities.

You may be asking, how are we the authority to make such adverse comments? Well we help people resolve any problems they may be facing. A very recent problem we have assisted a client with was in obtaining and enforcing a protection order against her husband.

Whilst we will not delve into all the facts and will always protect our clients privacy and identity, we would like to advise just a few events that happened which will support what we have stated earlier in the article of which we have obtained our clients consent.

It is a very daunting task for any person to try and seek protection against the person that is abusing them. When our client finally worked up the bravery to make a change and face this problem, she approached us for assistance. We immediately jumped into action and assisted her in the preparation of the protection order documents. If these documents are not done correctly and the opposition gets the assistance of an attorney, it can be overturned quite easily.

As we see with all these matters, the SAPS are never helpful. I would love to be proved wrong on this point but after various protection orders we have never seen a SAPS officer that will assist out of their own free will on such matters. Our client first approached the SAPS to request which court she needs to attend and they were disgruntled by the fact that she asked them. We did our own research and found the relevant court and address where she had to approach. Fortunately the courts are generally helpful and she managed to get an interim protection order granted!

We were relieved as now we felt our client had the protection she needed. This is where the problems begin for any person applying for such a protection order! THE SAPS! South African Police Service.

I will categorically state, that I have yet to converse with any SAPS member that seems to have a proper understanding of their roles in these matters, and due to lack of training and laziness, make this process a living hell for any victim. Most GBV victims are often worse off having gotten the protection order as it paints a target on their backs for the abuser who is now very angry that they would seek such protection.

Our client took the protection order to the SAPS and requested that they serve it. This is a requirement for the protection order that it must be personally served on the alleged abuser by an SAPS Officer. The SAPS members eventually and warily agreed to serve the order but demanded that she accompany them to the abuser and help them deliver it in person? Whilst I understand they can request this, why do they do it? They are simply putting the victim in harms way and we believe the reason they do it is to deter victims from going ahead with such orders. Fortunately, our client was brave enough to press ahead and went with them to deliver and enforce the order. It was very traumatic for her especially with all the verbal abuse she received when it was delivered and the abuser simply refused to sign for the order. The police eventually gave a return of service on the opened case docket that they had delivered the interim protection order although the alleged abuser refused to signed for the order. Whilst the SAPS were attempting to deliver the protection order the abuser had his attorneys on the line whom advised that he should not sign it. As part of the order, the police were also to remove all firearms from his possession. This did not happen and they just chose to ignore it.

Nonetheless, it is not a requirement that the abuser needs to sign for a protection order, only that it needs to be served by an SAPS officer, for it to be effective. Therefore we had felt our client’s protection was finally in place. The abuser had his attorneys working on the matter quickly whom attempted to bring an Anticipation Order which is basically an urgent application to overturn the protection order. We assisted our client by appointing the correct attorneys to assist her on the matter and had the Anticipation order set aside and thereby keeping the interim protection order in place pending a final protection order.

All in all, there was an interim protection order in place and should the abuser commit any of the acts which had been restricted in terms of the protection order, he was to be arrested immediately.

This all happened about 2 weeks before the lockdown and our client was able to move out of the shared premises to her own flat.

The abuser just simply refused to believe there was a protection order and broke the conditions of the protection order on the first day. He approached her at work and abused and threatened her. She called the SAPS who would not come out and eventually when she was able to get away from him, she went to the relevant SAPS station and after much arguing got them to agree to open a case. They said that the protection order cannot be valid as he did not sign for it. We tried to explain to them that in terms of the act, the protection order only needs to be delivered to the abuser by a member of the SAPS. The SAPS member that delivers the order needs to fill in a return of service confirming that they had done it. They still tried to convince our client otherwise but after having us on the line and our client being persistent, they eventually agreed to open the case. This was done before the lockdown and to date…. NOTHING HAS COME OF IT. It seems the abuser has friends in the relevant SAPS station and they simply refuse to act on this matter.

The abuser saw that he could break the protection order and that nothing would come of it and got more and more brazen as the time went by. Whilst we not going to state everything that has happened we will say that the final straw happened recently. He was in his own vehicle and started chasing her on the road whilst she was in her vehicle and she managed to drive and get to the SAPS station which were supposed to protect her. He attempted to drive her off the road but she managed to escape and get around him. She got out of her car and ran into the police station and he chased her into the station. He was not in the least bit scared that anything would happen to him. She was quite hysterical and scared and was shouting for help and shouting to the officers that she needs help and has a protection order against this man but the SAPS took offence to this and said they would not assist her unless she calms down and treats them with respect. It seems that the abuser has friends in the police station and there was a SAPS officer who approached him in a very friendly manner and quietly told him to leave quickly. This same SAPS officer then took over the situation and prevented anyone else in the station from assisting our client. Luckily our client was clever enough to take video recordings of the abuser chasing her on the road and chasing her into the SAPS station. She was also wise enough to take a secret voice recording of the officer whom assisted in opening the most recent report.

What we heard on the voice recording was disgusting to say the least. In the recording the officer is very aggressive with our client and trying to tell her that she is going to withdraw the case tomorrow and that she is just there wasting their time like all other women who come in and cry about these sort of things. Then he goes on to say that she has no friends and no one likes her. He goes even further to start giving her free life advice on how to choose men and must not choose them based on the quality of the sex and their looks. The officer basically stated he is a good Christian man and he knows these type of women and how they choose their men. The officer said that this was all our client’s fault and she had brought it upon herself and was now making it their problem to sort out. I wish I was over exaggerating about what happened in their conversation, but we have it all on a voice recording. Again, our client persisted and finally got him to take a statement and he said he would open a case. He basically broke all the requirements of how an officer is supposed to treat victims of GBV. Please see the link below as per the SAPS’s own website.

https://www.saps.gov.za/resource_centre/women_children/domestic_violence.php

To date, our client never received a case number for the latest violation and has no idea what the SAPS are doing on the latest report.

Even to date, they have not removed his firearms!

We decided we cannot leave it there. We assisted our client in reporting the matter to the station commander, the Provincial Police Commissioner for her province and to the National Police Commissioner. No response.

I then contact the GBV Hotline to see if they could do anything for our client. They advised that they are just social workers and actually wanted to know if we could assist them with the SAPS as they saw that we were taking extraordinary steps to assist our client. The social workers on the GBV hotline are very friendly and try their best to help but their hands are also tied and they can only tell you what is supposed to happen in terms of the law.

We then took the final step and reported the matter to IPID. Independent Police Investigative Directorate. The police watch dog. We informed them of everything that happened and Fortunately they have been a bit more helpful just for the fact that we got some responses and finally got a call from the station commander but all that has happened is that we are going the full circle again. The station commander appointed a new investigating officer. The new officer started off great on the first day, jumped into action, went to arrest the abuser and …… Called back later in the day and started asking our client if the abuser signed for the protection order… She tried to explain everything to the new investigating officer but all the officer wanted to know was… “Did he sign for the order mam?” Our client replied no and the officer hung up on her.

This is where we are now and are getting no responses again. We have no idea what is happening on the case and if anything is happening. Our poor client feels helpless and is too scared to travel anywhere to even buy food as it definitely seems that the abuser is somehow tracking our client’s movements and is ready to pounce whenever she leaves the house. She has become a prisoner in her own property. All her rights in terms of the law are non existent.

After listening to the President’s speech on Wednesday evening the 13th of May 2020 and hearing how they are combating GBV related matters we decided it pertinent to let people know what is really happening.

NOTHING. All the women in this country are left to fend for themselves.

I would sincerely hope that this article would get into the hands of a government official that can maybe make a change and the change urgently needs to start with the SAPS! They need training and guidance on how to handle these matters as at this stage it is left to each SAPS member to simply decide how they wish to handle the matter of which the SAPS at this stage deem these matters more of a nuisance than a crime.

We wish all the ladies suffering from GBV out there can get the help and support they desperately need and hope even more so that the government will not just say they are taking action but actually take proper action! We would suggest that they go so far as to create a special task force to deal with these matters!

Here’s hoping!

This is Part 1 of this article as we are not done yet! We will not give up until we have found a resolution to this problem. As soon as we have beaten the problem, we will do a Part 2 article on how we resolved it and can just hope that it will help other victims out there in their fight against the system.

We will also do a general article on obtaining protection orders and your rights in terms of those protection orders.

"It always seems impossible until it's done" Nelson Mandela.

The HFS Consulting