Mother in Namibia says her disabled teenage son was sexually assualted in prison

From AllAfrica.com:

A mentally handicapped 16-year-old boy has been a victim of sexual assaults while locked up with adult convicts in Windhoek Central Prison, the boy's mother claims in a case in which she yesterday asked the High Court's help in getting her son released from jail.

The boy has been kept locked up in a prison or Police holding facility - first at Omaruru Police Station and since April last year at Windhoek Central Prison - since September 2007. This is stated by the boy's mother in an affidavit in a case in which she asked the High Court to order her son's release from prison and to set aside an Omaruru Magistrate's order that has resulted in him being locked up in Windhoek Central Prison in the first place.

The urgent application, which was to be heard by Acting Judge Johan Swanepoel, was settled with Acting Judge Swanepoel yesterday giving an order that the boy had to be released from detention in Windhoek Central Prison's hospital unit and had to be transferred to the Psychiatric Unit of Windhoek Central Hospital by yesterday afternoon.

The boy's mother stated in her affidavit that her son was born mentally handicapped and has been receiving treatment for that condition, severe epilepsy and other health problems. He "has been in and out of hospital ever since I can remember," she stated.

On September 19 2007, after her son - then 15 years old - had returned from going to buy himself some ice lollies, people came to tell her that he had allegedly sexually assaulted a baby boy aged a year and six months, she related.

Her son was arrested as a result of those allegations. He has been kept in custody since then. By mid-November 2007, after the boy had undergone a month-long period of observation at the Psychiatric Unit of Windhoek Central Hospital, State psychiatrist Dr Ndahambelela Mthoko declared that due to his mental handicap he was not fit to stand trial and that he was not able to appreciate the wrongfulness of his alleged actions at the time of the alleged crime.

Dr Mthoko recommended that the boy had to be placed in a place of safety, and remarked that he required close supervision and would not benefit from involuntary hospital admission.

On February 15 last year, a Magistrate at Omaruru ordered that the boy had to be detained in a prison as a President's patient - a status that has the effect that someone would be locked up in prison until the President one day decides to order his release.

By mid-April last year, she was informed by the head of Omaruru Prison that her son would be transferred to Windhoek for treatment, the boy's mother informed the court.

She was under the impression that her son would be treated at a mental hospital in Windhoek, she stated.

After eventually tracing her son to Windhoek Central Prison, she travelled from her home in the Omaruru area to visit him in Windhoek, she related.

She found him under the supposed care of an inmate in Windhoek Central Prison, who told her he was looking after the boy by giving him his medicine, she stated.

In December last year she again visited her son in prison, accompanied by a lawyer from the Legal Assistance Centre, Linda Dumba Chicalu, whose assistance she had sought by then. During that visit her son told her that he had been repeatedly raped by various inmates in the prison, with the latest incident claimed to have taken place only the previous day, she stated.

This was reported to senior officers in charge of the prison, she informed the court.

She also claimed that she was told that her son was being kept with between 30 and 40 adult inmates sharing two cells in the prison hospital, where he was the only minor person.

This past Sunday she again visited her son in prison, and after she noticed that his clothes were torn, he told her that this had happened when he was again raped in a toilet at the prison earlier that day, she
related.

She stated to the court: "Currently, Windhoek Central Prison Hospital is not the appropriate place of safety for (the boy) because he is being raped or subjected to sexual acts to which he cannot consent due to the fact that he is mentally retarded and is very vulnerable. The prison authorities have a legal duty to ensure that special care is taken and precautionary measures put in place in order to prevent any harm from befalling (the boy). (He) urgently needs to be in a place of safety where he will not be exposed to any harm."