A transgender woman who claims she was raped when police put her in the same cell as male inmates in 2016 has been trying for years to sue the Minister of Police for damages in the Western Cape High Court. (Ashraf Hendricks/GroundUp)
- A transgender woman brought a civil case against the Minister of Police in 2019, after being raped while in police detention.
- The minister had six months to file a plea in response to the action. It took 26 months before the minister asked the court to condone the late filing of the plea.
- The condonation was denied in a September 2023 ruling.
The Minister of Police has failed in a bid to appeal a previous court judgment relating to a civil case a transgender woman had lodged in which she said she had been raped in police custody.
Debbie (not her real name) alleges she was raped on the night of 5 December 2016 by two of three detainees in the police’s holding cells in the rural Boland town where she lived.
Police had arrested her for riotous behaviour at her parents’ request, according to GroundUp.
In her civil case against the Minister of Police, filed in the Western Cape High Court in November 2019, Debbie stated that after her release the next day, she, with the assistance of the ABBA Family Counselling Centre and the Triangle Project, went for a medical exam which confirmed anal penetration.
She did not pursue criminal charges as she did not trust the police officers in her hometown.
Her case is that police officers at the station where she was held had contravened the SAPS Western Cape Standard Operational Procedure for the Detention of Transgender Prisoners by putting her in a cell with men.
She also says she should have been placed in a cell by herself, and that there was an empty cell available.
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After the civil claim was instituted against the Minister of Police, the minister’s response was due on 12 February 2020. But when no request for an extension for the filing of the minister’s plea was received by the court, a Notice of Bar was served on the minister on 17 February 2020.
A Notice of Bar is a procedural step that stops the other party from filing a plea when they fail to adhere to the rules of court.
The Notice of Bar also stops court cases from dragging on for years, and forces parties to stick to the timelines prescribed in the rules so cases can reach finality.
The minister only applied for condonation for late filing of the plea on 17 August 2022, after twice seeking postponements of a default judgment Debbie’s lawyers sought.
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Following a 27 September 2023 ruling, in which a judge found that the minister had not satisfactorily explained why it had taken 26 months to apply for a condonation, the minister sought leave to appeal the decision in December 2023.
On 7 June, the judge denied the minister leave to appeal the ruling, and fund that there were no prospects that a different court would come to a different decision.
The Minister of Police had a month to approach the Supreme Court of Appeal, but Debbie’s legal team said they had not received any such notification.
This means Debbie could apply for a default judgment.
