"On Friday nights we used to get together, have something to drink and think about what we can do," a young man from KwaZulu-Natal told researcher Benita Moolman when she was interviewing sexual offenders in prison. " 'Let's go out and rape' is what we would [decide]."
Moolman, who interviewed 72 convicted sexual offenders for her PhD, said the man spoke about rape in a casual manner, "very much as a form of recreation".
Marcel Londt, head of the social welfare department at the University of the Western Cape, said SA has a culture that promotes rape.
She described how a seven-year-old girl had brought a friend to a workshop she organised for sexual abuse survivors on the Cape Flats. Londt thought the children must be in the wrong place until the girl told her: "No miss, she has been raped already."
Londt, a former head of the Western Cape Rape Crisis board, said: "Rape, domestic violence, femicide, these are rites of passage in SA."
Gang members, for example, see rape as a way to boost their status, much like collecting fast cars and other trophies.
Childline founder Joan van Niekerk said: "The culture of entitlement extends to sexual behaviour. We are seeing rape on an absolutely unprecedented scale."
A convicted offender told crime researcher Chandré Gould of the Institute for Security Studies that the first girl he had sex with had previously been gang raped and had a nervous breakdown. "Why? Because her boyfriend was a gang leader and he let his whole gang rape her."
The offender's history is one of 19 in "Beaten Bad: The Life Stories of Serious Offenders", a report written by Gould.
Riaan Perry, a probation officer and social worker for the Western Cape department of social development, has found that offenders often believe "a violent response is acceptable in certain situations".
Moolman said the status of men as authority figures in SA meant they are seldom questioned about their movements, which makes it easier for them to get access to victims and protects them from suspicion.
She gave the example of a social worker who ran youth camps and who invited children to his home "to help him fix the cupboards". He never had to explain himself.
"He would allow them to watch pornography at his house and get them to masturbate with each other. He would rape them in groups," she said.
The culture of entitlement extends to sexual behaviour. We are seeing rape on an absolutely unprecedented scale
— Childline founder Joan van Niekerk
"The boys became younger and younger. At some point a boy who was 10 years old went to tell a teacher."
Moolman said she had interviewed a stepfather who used his position as head of the household to grant his stepdaughter "favours", like smoking in the house or driving in the car, then extorted sex from her.
"His belief system was different to ours," Moolman said. "He talked about emotions and sex, but there is no way it was a relationship. Sex was not with the stepdaughter's consent."
Tarisai Mchuchu, executive director of Mosaic - a nongovernmental organisation that works to prevent domestic violence and supports women who have been abused - said many men refused to acknowledge that their violent behaviour constituted abuse.
Mchuchu said men who assault their partners often say, "She is not a victim, she's my wife."
Londt said there was a worrying trend for children to commit aggression and sexual violence against other children.
"There is a growing body of children who have been exposed to violence," she said. Children as young as five were violating others.
According to the 2018/2019 crime statistics, minors committed 736 murders and 4,196 common assaults in the period.
Gould said: "The children who become violent men are mostly victims of violence themselves - trauma, racism, bullying, corporal punishment and brutalising institutions. Their families are often dysfunctional or broken."
When babies and young children do not having caring adults to look after them they develop an "attachment deficit", and related to this is a lack of empathy, common among serious offenders.
Gould's report includes an interview with a man sentenced to jail for 80 years for the abduction, strangling and rape of three girls over a period of a few months. He also suffered as a child.
He picked up his first victim in a taxi, then drove out of town to rape and strangle her, Gould said. He then raped and killed two more girls because he felt "an overwhelming compulsion" to repeat the crime.
Gould quotes a teacher at the school of one of his victims who said she saw "many cases of children who had been raped, children raped by members of their own family".
A study conducted in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal by Professor Rachel Jewkes of the South African Medical Research Council found that becoming a rapist is "significantly associated" with the absence of loving parents, childhood trauma, bullying and being bullied.
Researchers said an important step in reducing the incidence of rape was to protect children from early trauma and strengthen families. They also said first-time, petty offenders should not get locked into a brutalising system that turns them into hard-bitten criminals.
Only one woman or girl out of every nine who are raped is likely to report it. Others, like University of Cape Town student Uyinene Mrwetyana, have been silenced forever. Mchuchu said: "May she not have died in vain."
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.