Police have arrested a 51-year-old man for allegedly raping an eight-year-old girl over a period of five years while bathing her.
The child from Athlone had been in the care of a relative because her mother did not have stable living conditions at the time.
The man was arrested in June after the girl told her mother about the abuse.
The child has since been placed back into her mother’s care and is receiving counselling.
“It actually started the week before I got married in 2014 when the child was three,” says the 36-year-old mom.
“While we were busy cleaning, the child was asleep and was talking in her sleep. She said, ‘don’t touch my koekaloekas and ‘I don’t like you’.”
Little girl abused for five years. Picture: Jack Lestrade
She says they questioned the toddler at the time, but couldn’t get any clear answers.
The couple then moved to the Northern Cape, leaving the girl in the care of a relative.
“Our places were always too small and not suitable for her because she is asthmatic,” explains the mom.
When they moved back to Cape Town last year, the girl spoke about the abuse again.
“She said, ‘mommy, you must put Vaseline there because it hurts’.
“I was shocked. How could she know this and why?”
She says they took the girl to Red Cross Children’s Hospital where it was confirmed she had been raped over a period of time.
The girl’s stepfather, 36, says they were shocked to learn the suspected rapist had been bathing with the child all the years.
“We questioned how a man could bathe her and still share a bath with her when she was a little girl and this would bring arguments and I was also thrown out of this person’s house for saying it is not right,” he says.
The mother adds: “She said this person would wash her up and down and place his fingers inside her private parts.”
The suspect has since been released on bail of R1500 and is to appear in the Athlone Magistrates’ Court on Monday.