12 Jan 2021

Botswana Police Service (BPS) acting commissioner, Ms Dinah Marathe, says 264 cases of gender based offenses were reported since December 14 to January 3.

Updating the press in Gaborone on Thursday, she said 121 cases were reported before the curfew, while 143 were reported during the curfew period.

Ms Marathe said 53 rape cases were reported before curfew period while 75 were reported during the period.

Meanwhile 11 murder cases were registered before curfew period while 13 cases were reported during the curfew time.

She further said 24 threats to kill cases were reported before curfew and 26 were reported during the curfew period.

As for the defilement, 33 cases were registered before the curfew and 29 cases were registered during curfew period.

Ms Marathe expressed a concern on the continuous escalation of GBV cases, despite repeated public education about the matter; women and girl child being the most hit hard by this  offense and men being perpetrators.

Ms Marathe reiterated that the police enforcement continued to work effortlessly and kept implementing different measures to lessen the situation.

She said some of the measures implemented were to capacitate some police officers on how to deal with reported GBV cases in regard to handle the investigations of the reported matter, giving the victims some privacy and also offering a friendly service that would help victims to feel comfortable and open up.

Ms Marathe said the police had also revived the referral system, saying victims on referral to health facilities were accompanied by police officers, and they made arrangements with health facilities that victims be given priority on attendance by the doctors.

She said through DNA database scientific support, police officers were able to detect rape perpetrators who victims could not identify well.

Ms Marathe said a toll free number had also been set, saying to give victims and anyone under GBV threat to report anytime and be able to speak to social workers on first hand.

She also stated that a child friendly centre had been set at Broadhurst and was fully functional, ‘this is where we keep victimized minors, the centre is set in a manner that would help them relax and be in a position to explain well the ordeal they went through,’ she said.

She said as most perpetrators turns out to be men, they recently held Pitso ya Borre in effort to encourage men to find a way to talk about domestic issues that weighed heavily on them, thus leading some of them to resort to GBV.

She also shared that as GBV cases kept escalating, plans to have a fully-fledged branch that would specifically deal with such cases were under way. BOPA