To Sir with love..

TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE, GRAPHIC VIOLENCE

(in order from top photo to bottom)

In 2004, Pearl Mali was raped for the first time by an elderly man whom her mother brought home from church. She was 12 years old. The man raped her in her bedroom almost daily until she was 16 years old. “My mother didn’t want me to be gay so she asked him to move in and be my husband. She hoped it would change me.” 

In December 2009, Zukiswa Gaca left a party to buy cigarettes. A man, who knew she was a lesbian, accompanied her. He deceptively led her to a shack where someone was sleeping. “He said he was going to show me I was a woman so he took off his pants and put a blanket over the man sleeping on the bed. He raped me in front of his friend who just lay there under the blanket.”

 In November 1994, Thamsanqa Mdluli was gang raped. During the attack, one of the men told Thamsanqa that they were raping him to restore his manhood. 

In 2001, Tebogo Motswagi, a transgender woman was raped by seven men and penetrated with a broomstick. 

In June 2010, Lindeka Stulo was attacked by a man while walking home. He slammed her head into a nearby wall with a heavy crate. Two weeks later, the same man struck her on the back of the head with a bar. “You are a girl, not a boy,” she remembers hearing. “I am going to beat you until you stop what you are doing with other girls.” 

A South African gay rights organization says it deals with up to 10 “corrective rapes” every week. WEEKLY!

South Africa has one of the world’s highest rates of sexual assault. According to a 2009 government survey, one in four men admit to having sex with a woman who did not consent to intercourse, and nearly half of these men admitted to raping more than once. An earlier government study found that a majority of rapes were committed by friends and acquaintances of the victim.