Victims blame police for unresolved cases

By Shallot Mohutege and Rosalia David

OVER the years, violent crimes have haunted local communities and stumped police leaving questions that often linger for decades, as years pass without an arrest or even a credible suspect.

In the wake of the recent #ShutItDown protest against femicide and brutality, a few victims have come out to share their horrific incidents blaming the police for their unresolved cases.

A young woman from Windhoek, Nicole Van Wyk (not real name) said she vividly remembers how she was raped at the age of 14 in 2010 and opened a case immediately with the Namibian Police which they allegedly left unattended.

“The first case happened when I was 14, this was in 2010, and I was raped by my teacher who taught me history and entrepreneurship in grade 9. It was never solved, my mom just asked that he never practice teaching again,” she said.

She further alleged that in 2016, she opened another rape case after she was sexually molested at a house party. Van Wyk said after having a few drinks she fell asleep and woke up to someone on top of her.

“The person then started beating me and I fought back. I started shouting but apparently nobody could hear me. He tried to bribe me, telling me he will give me N$10 000 if I let it go. My cousin who I was with called the police and the guy immediately left, the police arrived and we went to the hospital at the Woman and Child Abuse Centre and we did the swabbing.

They called me a couple of times after that but up to today nothing was done,” she explained.

Another woman Belinda Swarts (not real name) based in Walvis Bay blamed the police for her “unresolved attempted murder case” that was opened in 2010 alleging that a stranger stabbed her while seven months pregnant.

“There was a number that would text me on my phone saying they want to be friends and I started chatting back to this number for almost a month and eventually we decided to meet. The day we agreed to finally meet, I was stabbed two times in the stomach while walking out of the house. That number has been off ever since. The number could have been traced but up to this point, I am living in fear,” she said.

Selma Daniel (not real name) from Windhoek was allegedly attacked by her husband after asking for a divorce.

“I got attacked by my husband on 22 August last year. We had separated for three months and he demanded to see his three daughters. I arranged a place for him to stay in the outside rooms for a few days to see his daughters but in the meantime, he was planning to hurt me instead. He attacked me with a hammer and knife that night but the police did not interview the neighbours that saw the ordeal and called the police to the scene,” she stressed.

Speaking to Confidente regarding unresolved cases, Namibia Police chief Sebastian Ndeitunga said sometimes cases take long before they are resolved while urging victims to follow up on their reports.

“If you give me the CR number I can follow it up and find out what was the delay and where was the delay. Every case has its own merit, I suspect there are delays in investigations, because of the challenges the police might be facing.”

Although he mentioned a few factors that could delay a case, Ndeitunga also pointed out that there are also officers who are lazy.

“In some cases it is because of the laziness of some police officers but there are various challenges that are involved. We do not know in these specific cases what exactly happened,” he added.

Speaking to Confidente under anonymity, a member of the justice system expressed that the number one cause of stagnation during the investigation of cases in general is the simple fact that investigators are overworked due to understaffing.

“One investigator could be dealing with hundreds of dockets that are at different stages of investigations. Whilst the investigator is dealing with one of his/her files, he/she is then assigned a new case which is either a fresh case or one which is reassigned from someone else. The officer is therefore forced to drop the other files they were working on so that they can try to solve the new case while it is still fresh. Before they can finish investigating this new case, another case is assigned and the cycle continues. Investigators therefore have minimal time to be making contact with each and every one of the people they need to work with to build their cases,” he explained.

He went on to say that the GBV protection units (GBVPU) were introduced to try and address this issue: “The idea was to have sufficiently trained people carrying out specialised investigations i.e. on serious crime, GBV, commercial crimes, protected recourses etc; however, the units have become overworked due to being understaffed.”

He said there is also no criteria in the selecting of members to work for these units while training and capacity building is lacking.

He added that, a lot of police officers in the GBVPU have not been equipped with the sort of special skills required to successfully carry out their functions or on how to deal with vulnerable witnesses such as victims of sexual and/or physical assault in a domestic set up.

The source further stated that a lot of police officers lack the will and therefore will not go the extra mile to investigate a case.

“There is simply no motivation in the force to work hard because there is no guarantee that your hard work will be rewarded. Promotions in the police force are scarce, and when they do come around, the process is riddled with favouritism. Some police officers who started off doing outstanding work, tirelessly and selflessly working overtime and using their own recourses in the process are forced to either resign or to simply relax and just wait for pay day like everyone else,” he said.

He however mentioned that, in most cases of sexual and physical abuse (including murder) where the perpetrator is unknown, it is difficult to build a case or when there is no evidence to support the allegations made to the police.

“Take the case involving young Shannon (Wasserfall) for example. The police, just like the rest of us, only knew that she had gone missing. There were no leads, no tips, no information, no witnesses and no suspects.

There was also no body (corpse) from which any traces could be made until the anonymous text messages were sent six months later. Unfortunately the police can only work with the evidence at their disposal to build a case.”