{"id":10082,"date":"2012-04-19T16:20:59","date_gmt":"2012-04-19T14:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/04\/viral-gang-rape-phone-video-shocks-south-africa\/"},"modified":"2012-04-19T16:20:59","modified_gmt":"2012-04-19T14:20:59","slug":"viral-gang-rape-phone-video-shocks-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/viral-gang-rape-phone-video-shocks-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Viral gang-rape phone video shocks South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">JOHANNESBURG, April 19<\/span> (Reuters) &#8211; Seven young men appeared<br \/>\nin a South African court on Thursday to face charges of<br \/>\ngang-raping a mentally handicapped teenage girl and recording<br \/>\nthe act on a cell-phone video that then went viral.<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The case touched a raw nerve in a country where an average<br \/>\nof 181 people a day are raped or sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The accused range in age from 14 to 20 and are suspected of<br \/>\nholding the girl as a sex slave in a Soweto township residence,<br \/>\nfilming the rapes with a mobile phone and offering her coins to<br \/>\nkeep quiet.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The 17-year-old girl, who went missing a few weeks ago, was<br \/>\nfound by police on Wednesday in the home of a 37-year-old man,<br \/>\nwho has also been arrested. Police have not revealed the<br \/>\nidentities of any involved due to the nature of the crime.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The hearing was postponed and will resume next week, but the<br \/>\ncase has set off a wave of soul searching.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>In a front page editorial, the Star newspaper, one of South<br \/>\nAfrica&#8217;s biggest-circulation dailies, described the incident is<br \/>\n&#8220;Our Disgrace&#8221;. Government spokesman Jimmy Manyi branded it a<br \/>\n&#8220;barbaric act&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Successive governments have pledged to cut crime, putting<br \/>\nmore police on the street and launching high profile campaigns<br \/>\nthat have done little to reduce the violence.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Massive unemployment, poverty, easy access to weapons and<br \/>\nthe lingering effects of the racial oppression of apartheid have<br \/>\nbeen cited by as reasons for the persistently high levels of<br \/>\nviolent crime.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We come from a history of violence, where people have lived<br \/>\nand grown up using violence in order to get what they want, to<br \/>\nsettle conflicts,&#8221; said gender activist Lisa Vette.\t<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Reuters Television; Editing by<br \/>\nEd Cropley)<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright\">\n<p>         \t\t\u00a9 Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JOHANNESBURG, April 19 (Reuters) &#8211; Seven young men appeared in a South African court on Thursday to face charges of gang-raping a mentally handicapped teenage girl and recording the act on a cell-phone video that then went viral. The case touched a raw nerve in a country where an average of 181 people a day [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-10082","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}