Monica Sikile, 50, weeps for 30 minutes as she tells the story of how her boyfriend, Lithemba Nyandeni, brutally raped, beat and throttled her four years ago in their Cape Flats home.
Nyandeni was finally convicted this week thanks to helpful police, a dedicated prosecutor and counsellors from Rape Crisis who helped Sikile through her ordeal.
Sikile says she was only saved because a neighbour's child heard the commotion and alerted his mother. "If a small child didn't intervene I would be lying in a grave today."
Like many women who feel trapped in a cycle of domestic abuse, Sikile loved Nyandeni. She had hoped he could change.
It's a theme Grassy Park police station commander Col Dawood Laing hears often. Although his station boasts a near 100% arrest rate for rape cases, and just under 90% for domestic abuse cases, he says victims often withdraw their co-operation after making the initial complaint. And he says households with repeat domestic abuse complaints often end up as murder scenes.
"Conviction rates for domestic violence are very low because a lot of our women depend on the perpetrators for financial reasons, for a roof over their head - and a lot of times the abuser just comes back, buys the victim gifts, spoils them a little bit and convinces them to withdraw the charge," he says.
"We have a delayed justice system because we wait about 10 or 11 months for a DNA report. Cases are postponed for long periods; victims have just come to grips with the incident, then they go to court and all the trauma comes back."
Jarrod Seethal, the prosecutor in Sikile's case, says: "Whether they are a child or an adult, every single victim feels they are to blame, they're the ones who carry the shame and the guilt. Monica would blame the fact that she stayed in the abusive relationship when she should have left."
Sikile, a cleaner for a logistics company, felt so much shame at having been raped that she lied to her employer about taking leave so often to go to court. But when she eventually told her manager about the ordeal, she was reimbursed her leave days.
The shame almost led to her withdrawing from the case but she says Seethal and her counsellors helped her stay the course.
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