Abstract:
"I used to see it in prison. Others were raped, but it never happened to me," said a convicted fraudster who spent seven years in jail, most of them at Cape Town's notorious Pollsmoor Prison. His claim about his own treatment is improbable. Experts and ex-prisoners say the young, the good-looking, homosexuals, the weak and those convicted of white-collar or "sissy" crimes are most vulnerable to male rape in South Africa's prisons. Such is the secretive nature of male rape that survivors view it through the lens of denial and avoidance. And an ill-equipped criminal justice system remains unwilling to admit, let alone tackle, its pervasiveness.
