These are the words of rape survivor Rochelle Herbst, 37, who was raped at knifepoint on a smallholding in Melkbosstrand.
|||Cape Town - “I’ve become a horrible and angry person. I now have so much hate towards people in general, but mostly men. My life will never be the same again. He has left me with a deep scar – it’s going to take a while before it heals.”
These are the harrowing words of rape survivor Rochelle Herbst, 37, who was raped at knifepoint on a smallholding in Melkbosstrand on January 27. Her rapist’s words, “If you try anything I will kill you”, echoed in her ears every day, she said
“Every little sound makes me jump. I’ve always been afraid of the dark, but now I’m so terrified that I sleep with the lights on.”
Herbst was house-sitting on the property where she was employed as a dog groomer and lived in a shipping container. She has since moved out. Just before 7pm she heard a noise in the yard. When she went to investigate she found a man standing next to her home carrying a backpack. He said he was looking for a job.
She told him to leave, but he did not move. When she reached for her cellphone he produced a knife, grabbed her by the neck and pushed her inside the container.
Once inside, he demanded valuables. “There was nowhere to escape. I was trapped inside a little room with one small window.”
Herbst said her attacker then put socks over his hands and threw a blanket over her head.
“He ransacked the place for about 20 minutes,” she said. “He then asked me to pull down his pants as he ‘wanted to have sex with a white woman’.”
He then raped her. “I could feel the tip of the knife at the back of my neck…it’s a horrible experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
“I kept thinking ‘he is going to kill me because I know what he looks like’.”
When her rapist was done he told her: “It’s getting dark. I have to catch a bus, but I will see you again.”
She ran to a nearby farm and was taken to hospital.
“I was so angry, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone,” she said.
Herbst has now started to see a counsellor from the Community Intervention Centre in Milnerton. “Talking about it helps me handle the flashbacks that haunt me.”
No arrests have been made.
Cape Argus