For Sgt Refilwe Tladi, seeing serial rapists being convicted brings her closure as a rape survivor.
Tladi, 44, who has been working in the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences unit in Gauteng for 11 years, said she is able to vicariously enjoy the closure experienced by victims whose cases she is able to successfully prosecute.
The mother of four said she was raped at the age of 13, but has never received closure on the incident as the culprit was never arrested.
Tladi spoke to Sowetan on Wednesday after Sello Abram Mapunya, 33, was found guilty of 70 counts of rape, house breaking, robbery, assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and assault in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria.
Mapunya had terrorised communities of Pretoria for five years between 2014 and 2019 when he was arrested and eventually linked to 56 cases of rape in Atteridgeville, Mamelodi, Olievenhoutbosch and Silverton.
“In 2016, we were requested to form a task team for Serial and Electronic Crime Investigations within FCS. We were tasked with handling cases which consist of rapes where suspects have raped more than one victim,” Tladi told Sowetan.
She said their team was made aware of Mapunya’s reign of terror in 2018 when several cases bearing the same modus operandi were reported in Mamelodi.
“We traced the cases and realised that there were more cases in Atteridgeville and Olievenhoutbosch where the suspect broke into the victims’ homes between 1am and 4am, robbed them of their possessions and raped them,” she said.
“We were able to get a Section 205 application [used to obtain cellphone information] to trace one of the victim’s cellphones and found that the phone was being used by Mapunya’s girlfriend. We met with her and asked her where she got it from and she told us that Mapunya gave it to her.
“We called Mapunya and asked to meet him. On the day we met him, he was carrying a sports bag containing items from a house break-in from the night before which also had victims’ cellphones and sim cards,” she said.
Mapunya was arrested in 2019, taken in for questioning and had his DNA matched against samples already in the possession of the police.
“First he was linked to 14 cases, then 20 and eventually 56. We called the victims and most of them did not know him because he broke into their homes in the middle of the night,” Tladi said.
They could not trace 20 victims as they changed addresses.
Patience Maseko, 33, whose mother Alinah Maseko, 52, was one of the women raped by Mapunya, said they relocated to Mpumalanga out of fear that he would return and commit the same offence. Both mother and daughter wanted to be named.
Patience said she was lucky that he did not rape her because she was three months pregnant when he broke into their Atteridgeville home in February 2019.
“I told him that I was pregnant and he pulled off the blankets to check. That’s when he left me alone, but dragged my mother out of the house and went to rape her. He took our cellphones and money as well,” she said.
In handing down judgment, judge Papi Mosopa said he was satisfied with the state’s case, which it had proved beyond reasonable doubt.
Mosopa said the accused raped his victims in the comfort of their homes where they should have felt safe, and invaded their privacy.
“The accused also raped them in the presence of their children and husbands,” he said.
Mosopa will sentence Mapunya on Thursday.
