Lovers, Acquaintances and Strangers: The Relevance of Victim-Offender Relationships in the Attrition of Rape Cases in South Africa

In South Africa fewer than 20% of reported rape cases result in a prosecution. This paper reflects on the relevance of the victim defendant relationship in police investigations and case disposal decisions in South Africa and the definitional difficulties of categorising a relationship as “intimate”. It draws on two empirical studies analysing discontinued police dockets at 8 rural and urban police stations and interviews with prosecutors, magistrates and traditional leaders. Teasing out the nature of the complainant’s relationship to the accused and the relevance thereof can be problematic in practice, as well as methodologically fraught. The question of how well the complainant knew the perpetrator and assumptions made by the investigating officer about this relationship are two interlinked factors that make her credibility suspect. As such, one docket might contain a complainant’s statement referring to the accused as an ‘acquaintance’, a witness statement referring to him as a ‘friend’ of the complainant, and speculation in the investigation diary that he was in fact her ‘boyfriend’. Furthermore, much of the popular discourse, and some of the literature, equates ‘acquaintance rape’ and ‘date rape’, treating both as essentially resistant to policing or at least very difficult to prevent. Where the ‘acquaintance’ category includes men whom the complainant met just prior to the rape (those Estrich refers to as ‘an almost but not perfect stranger’), or only knew by sight, as well as those with whom she may already have enjoyed a degree of intimacy, the category becomes a nonsensical catch-all. Collapsing these categories elides the extent of trust that might have existed in the relationship, the strategies that the perpetrator might have used to overcome resistance, and the pressures that the complainant would be subject to, either not to report or to withdraw the complaint.