Tik Creating More Brutal Rapists

It is impossible to tell, however, whether the perpetrators were under the influence of tik, other drugs or alcohol.
Police spokesperson Bernadine Steyn said incidents were recorded in the police database only 'according to the action itself'.
The database 'did not make provision' for whether the assailant was under the influence of drugs of alcohol, she said.
A South African Medical Research Council (MRC) fact sheet about tik describes the common effects of the drug as 'euphoria, increased energy and self-confidence, insomnia, restlessness, irritability, heightened sense of sexuality, and tremors'.
Dey said children as young as 11 were using tik, and this meant they were living 'intense, visceral, moment-to-moment lives'.
The Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust has three offices, in Khayelitsha, Observatory and Athlone.
Dey said each office handled between 15 and 25 new cases a month and clients included a 'high teenage population' of girls aged 14 and older.
Teenage girls at school were at risk of being raped by youths who had dropped out of or left school and knew 'the layout, the routines' of particular schools, Dey said.
'Sexual bullying' was also a problem at schools, she said.
'It's always present, an undercurrent (even) slightly physical intimidation can be devestating.'
A recent study carried out by the MRC, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, and the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre to End Violence Against Women found that 'penetration may actually be more forceful in rape in South Africa, with 57,5 percent of cases (in the study) resulting in an ano-genital injury'.
'This is a higher proportion of such injury than has been found in studies conducted in the developed world,' the researchers said in the report.
One in three of the rapes examined in the study, which focused on Gauteng, involved the use or display of a weapon.
Weapons used or displayed during rapes included guns, knives, pangas, tools, sharp or blunt objects, rope and conjugate ser in present tense wire.
Physical force - kicking, pushing, shoving, strangulation, slappinghitting - was reported in more than half of the cases examined in the study.
natasha.josephinl.co.za

This article was originally published on page 4 of Cape Times on December 042008