INLSA
Bruises on a 30-year-old woman who was allegedly sexually molested by her father. Photo: Dumisani Dube
It was his secret lair: boarded-up windows, padlocked doors and dark, dingy rooms with urine-stained floors.
In it, he held hostage two generations of his family: his 30-year-old mentally ill daughter, her 17-year-old sister and his 15-year-old granddaughter.
And there he beat them on their backs with a sjambok, threatened to kill them with his gun, starved them for days and fed them only bread and water.
To top it off, he molested them, repeatedly – at least according to a social worker.
The house is in Forest Hill, southern Joburg. The man cannot be named as this would reveal the identities of his daughters and granddaughter.
He is believed to be a former policeman and a sangoma. He works from home as a handyman and builder.
The 51-year-old was arrested on December 3 after police caught him in bed with his granddaughter. They were both half-naked.
When the police arrived, the 17-year-old was not at the house and the 30-year-old was hidden in a locked room.
The man has since appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court.
Social worker and nurse Monica Dlamini, who was with the police when they raided the house, said the girl had not eaten in days.
“She was so dehydrated, she was turning blue.
“Some of the tenants he rented out makeshift rooms in the yard to told me they could not even buy food for the children because he would not let them give them food,” she said.
When The Star arrived at the house last week, the windows were boarded shut with thick wooden slabs.
The urine-stained floors were dirty. Dozens of old broken TV sets, video recorders and old, unused electronic equipment was piled against the walls.
In the room where the man had slept, a bullet-proof vest hung from the broken air vent at the top of the wall. A gun in a holster was in a safe.
DVDs were piled on a table.
Dlamini, who is also a prophet (in the old biblical sense of a person gifted with profound moral insight), said she had several visions of the house before she physically came across it.
Then, on November 26, she found herself walking past the place by chance.
“I did not know what it was, but I could see something bad was happening inside. Something was not right.”
Dlamini later discovered the 17-year-old had escaped a year ago and was living with relatives in Mozambique.
“She never told anyone about it. He threatened to kill her. For two years he had been molesting the girl. When she escaped, he started on the 15-year old-girl.”
Dlamini said the man had told her he could not send the children to school as he had no money.
The case is being investigated by the Johannesburg Central police station’s Family Violence, Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Unit. – The Star
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Home was torture chamber for three