The mother of the 11-year-old who accused Deveney Nel's alleged killer of raping her three years ago says she will launch a court action to review the legal process that let him loose.

‘My daughter reported her rape and the violent assault she survived precisely because she wanted to protect other children from being attacked. But the system completely failed her… and we believe it failed Deveney Nel as well,’ she told News24.

She chose to launch a review of the preliminary inquiry process against her daughter's alleged rapist after her efforts to establish what criminal offences he had actually been accused of in relation to the attack on her child met with failure. 

While the mother had sought a copy of the charge sheet in her daughter's case against the now 17-year-old, the NPA has told her lawyer that no such charge sheet existed.

The review action will require that all material and documentation that informed the NPA and the presiding magistrate's decision-making in the case must be handed over to the alleged rape survivor's mother, who has spent years trying and failing to get the prosecution services to respond to her queries and meet with her.

News24 notes that the Valkenberg Psychiatric Hospital which evaluated the suspect found that, because of his cognitive weakness and moral and social immaturity, he did not have criminal capacity at the time that he allegedly raped his 11-year-old victim in 2020.

But it stressed he was at high risk of offending, resorting to violence, and having ‘a disregard of societal rules and norms’.

This was why they recommended that he should be referred to a Children’s Court inquiry process that would normally have given the Western Cape Department of Social Development 90 days to conduct an investigation into what should happen to him – and whether he posed such a potential risk to himself and others that he should be treated in a secure facility.

Full News24 report