An Eerste River mother has spoken publicly for the first time about the trauma of learning that her three-year-old daughter was raped after going missing while in her father’s care on 30 June 2026 — a day that ended with the child found injured in bushes and the man allegedly caught assaulting her killed on the spot by enraged community members.
Her words, delivered with visible anguish, paint a picture of a family shattered in a matter of hours: a toddler left with a parent in what should have been a safe space, a frantic search, the sickening moment of finding out the child was not only missing but had been violated, and the grim reality of vigilante violence that followed.
“I WAS so hurt when I found out she was raped by that guy; I just felt like he took my daughter's future away!”
The mother, from Eerste River, described how the day began as an ordinary workday. She left the child with her father — the mother referring to him as “her daddy” — before receiving a phone call that changed everything.
The traumatised mother recalled getting the call and she said: “I went to work and left her with her daddy. Then I got the call to say she is missing. My heart sank.
“I can’t explain how I feel, what that guy did to her. He hurt her, he hurt me, and he took away her future.”
The child went missing in Forest Village, a community where narrow paths, shacks and open spaces can quickly become perilous when a young child disappears. According to information shared in the family’s account, the father is 39. He admitted that, on the afternoon his daughter vanished, he went to a nearby shebeen to buy a beer because he was hungover.
However, he denied negligence in the moments directly leading to her disappearance and insisted the child was not sitting with him when she went missing. He also denied ever sitting with the man later accused of the attack.
In his account of events, he said the toddler accompanied him to the shebeen and was playing with other children nearby.
He said: “She walked with me to the shebeen and was playing with her cousin and friends.
“They went to the shop together and when they came back, I asked where she was, and they said she was walking behind them, but she wasn't there.”
After realising she was missing, the father said community leaders advised him to open a case. By the time he returned, he learnt the child had been found — but what should have been relief turned into horror when details of her injuries emerged.
He added: “I was so happy that she was found. I thanked God. But then I heard she was raped! Those words… the trauma!"
The toddler was reportedly discovered injured in bushes behind a shack in Forest Village by a sex worker who said she caught the suspect on top of the child. The account, as relayed in the family’s description of events, suggests the suspect was confronted at the scene and then killed by community members.
The man allegedly caught assaulting her was killed on the spot by enraged community members.
For the mother, the suspect’s death does not erase what happened, but she described it as justice of a kind — rooted in the belief that the harm done to her child was irreversible.
She said of the man's death: “I feel that that was justice, because that guy they killed already killed my daughter and her future.”
The incident has also placed a harsh spotlight on questions of supervision, safety and possible neglect — not only in the father’s actions on the day, but in the broader environment that allowed a toddler to go missing and be attacked within a community setting.
Those concerns were voiced directly by Veranique “Benji” Williams, founder of the Faith and Hope Missing Persons Unit, whose team led the search efforts. Williams’ involvement, alongside her team members, formed a key part of the immediate community response after the child was reported missing.
In a deeply emotional scene following the search, the toddler was seen playing nearby with teddy bears gifted by Williams. The mother thanked Williams and fellow workers Nadia Faro and Juanita Maboussou, then broke down in tears — an expression of gratitude mixed with exhaustion, shock and grief.
Before leaving, Williams addressed the father in front of others and called for official oversight.
Before leaving, Williams turned to the father directly and said: “I want the Department of Social Development to check on that child, and the police. If there was neglect, they must follow through.”
Williams’ remarks underline the complex reality that often follows incidents involving children: while communities may mobilise quickly in the moment of crisis, the longer-term questions — about child safety, accountability and support — fall to formal systems such as social workers and the police.
The mother’s words, meanwhile, point to the lasting damage that sexual violence against a child can inflict not only on the victim but on the family. Her repeated reference to her daughter’s “future” suggests a fear that the trauma will ripple through the child’s life in ways the family cannot yet measure — emotionally, psychologically and socially.
At the same time, the community’s response — culminating in the suspect being killed — reflects the volatile anger that child rape cases can ignite, particularly in areas where residents feel the justice system is too slow, too distant or too uncertain to protect children. Yet such killings also carry their own consequences, including the risk of mistaken identity, the loss of critical evidence, and the replacement of due process with mob action.
In this case, the mother and father’s accounts leave multiple threads in play: a toddler last seen playing near a shebeen, a sudden disappearance, a search led by a missing persons unit, the child found injured in bushes, and the killing of a man alleged to have been caught in the act.
What remains unchanged is the core reality articulated by the mother: a child was harmed, a family has been torn open by violence, and the emotional aftermath will not be settled by the passage of days or by the swift brutality of community revenge.
“I can’t explain how I feel, what that guy did to her. He hurt her, he hurt me, and he took away her future.”
