10. Battle Against the Bunnies

Sex is another huge part of street life. Coming to Cape Town, I knew that rape was common on the streets, with both boys and girls. I also knew that sexual activity was common sometimes even between the boys.
I also knew that some of the boys prostituted themselves out to men, but I thought it was a small minority that was involved in those acts. It was only after I had been in Cape Town for five months that my eyes were opened to the fullness of what was going on.
A friend of mine had come to visit me from the States, and one night I took her to a restaurant downtown where an African band was playing.
When we left the restaurant, we decided to walk around and see some of the kids. We saw a few of them and then started looking for a particular kid and could not find him anywhere.
When we asked the other kids where he was, they would just say, “He’s up there.” When we got “up there” we did not see him and another kid would say, “He’s down there.”
We walked up and down with a couple of kids looking for him but didn’t find him anywhere.
At one point, Reagan (eleven years old at the time), one of the boys who was walking around with us, made a passing comment that the kid was probably “on the mountain”, but he got shy when I asked him what he meant by that. I just dropped it because I could see it was making him uncomfortable.
We looked around a little longer but didn’t see the kid anywhere, so we started making our way to my car. The other two boys accompanied us.
Strangely enough, when we walked around the corner where my car was parked, the kid that we had been looking for that entire time was sprawled out laying in the middle of the side walk in a deep sleep, only about ten feet away from my car.
He had two button-up business man-type shirts thrown over him like a blanket. It seemed extremely odd.
I walked up to him and tried to wake him up but he wouldn’t budge. Worried, I shook him really hard, and he groggily opened his eyes, but they uncontrollably shut again. I shook him again and told him to move out from the middle of the sidewalk.
We helped him move up and against the wall of a building, out of the middle of the sidewalk.
He went back into a deep sleep and we all just sat on the pavement beside him. Reagan had a sober look on his face and I turned to him and said, “Reagan, can I ask you something?”
Reagan looked at me with a serious look in his eyes and said, “Anything!”
I asked him what was going on with the kid and he took a deep breath and began to tell me everything. He said, “He has been on the mountain with a bunny.” I asked him what a bunny was and he told me that it was an older white man that likes to have sex with little boys.
My heart sank into my stomach and I felt sick. I asked him why the boy was sleeping so hard and he explained to me that the particular bunny that he had been with likes to give the kid sleeping tablets and then when the kid is asleep, he does whatever he wants to them.
He explained to me how that bunny would buy a meat pie and a drink. He would then pick up the boy, drive up Table Mountain and let the boy eat the pie and enjoy the drink, in which he had put a sleeping tablet. When he was finished, he would drop the sleeping boy off somewhere in town.
My stomach was in knots and I felt myself getting sicker. He then began telling me how the whole thing works.
I asked him how many of the boys were involved and he started naming names. It was just about every kid I knew. He told me that there were tons of bunnies that pick up the boys and it happens on a nightly basis, but the most active time is the weekends.
He started telling me the ins and outs of it all and he would practically close his eyes when he was talking, almost as if he was just retelling what he had experienced.
The worst part was when I asked the next question, “So, how much do they pay the boys?” He looked up at me like it was a stupid question and said, “PAY?! You get a pie and a drink! Not money!!”
I felt like someone kicked me in the stomach. I wanted to puke. He said that some of the boys got paid for it.
I later found out that little Reagan was just speaking out of experience. He had only gotten food and a drink because he was new to the streets, but most of the boys do it for money and not just food and drink.
We talked for a while and then my friend and I drove home. On the way home I couldn’t speak. I felt all sorts of different emotions swirling around in my head like a heavy storm.
It was a long ride home.
About ten minutes away from my house, I broke down and started crying uncontrollably. I didn’t understand why any kid should be subjected to such behavior.
The next few weeks I went through a series of emotions. For about a week, I was extremely heartbroken over the whole thing. I would cry, anywhere over anything, and for no particular reason, which is very unlike me.
Soon after that, I felt an uncontrollable anger and I just wished to see one of these bunnies so I could beat him to a bloody pulp.
After that, my heart became hard. It was strange because right after my eyes were opened that night, I started hearing the boys talk about it. I realized that this whole thing is a secret of the streets. There is almost like an unspoken code, where the kids rarely talk about it and if they do it is only with each other. They actually even convince themselves that they don’t even do the acts. It is easier for them all to just approach the whole issue with total denial.
Around that same time, some other boys were going through some rough times and they would tell me about these types of experiences.
I found that my heart had turned totally hard and I could listen to the most graphic of stories and not feel anything. I soon realized that to properly deal with this situation I would have to come to a happy medium of those three extreme emotions of being totally heartbroken, extremely angry, and being hard, calloused and unfeeling.
I soon was able to do just that. I saw that it was important to stay compassionate and not become too hard, but it was also good to develop a certain degree of hardness so that you are not a walking emotional wreck. But a healthy degree of anger is just as important.
That anger against the injustice is the driving force that makes you not just sit with the knowledge that you have learned, but do something about it.
And that is just what I decided to do.
I began speaking to different people and seeing what is being done and what can be done to stop these things from happening. This was the beginning of what has turned out to be one of my biggest and longest on-going battles!!
I began getting information every chance I could from the kids. I didn’t want to force it, because it is such a sensitive topic, but some of the kids were painfully open and honest about the whole thing.
I started seeing all the different aspects that were involved. I learned that the majority of the bunnies are white, middle to upper class, middle-aged men. Some of them even married.
I also learned that the majority of the kids had done it at least once, but a startling majority of them do it on a regular basis. I struggled to understand why they would do such a thing.
Then I started to understand. Most of the street kids come from rough situations. Before they come to the streets most of them have already developed coping mechanisms to separate themselves from reality and difficult emotional situations.
This can come from being in a house with parents that drink until they come to the point where they yell and scream and even beat the children. If the kid does not learn how to cope before he comes to the streets, he gets a crash course when he pulls up into the harsh reality that the streets have to offer.
It is always sad to see the “new kid” go through the process of being “broken” when he first comes to the streets. He is raped, beaten, introduced to drugs to numb his pain and eventually his innocence is robbed, and his heart becomes hard.
They learn to repress their feelings and walk in denial about the emotions they cannot push down.
The kids that take part in sexual activities like these harden themselves, block it out, and go on day by day as if it never even happened.
The code of secrecy helps out with this. They go on, not only as if it doesn’t faze them, but also as if it never even happens. To hold in something like that is dangerous because one day, it will all come out.
The child is also convinced that he is not committing any crimes. He is not stealing cell phones, breaking into cars, robbing people, breaking into houses or even just begging for money.
The only person that he is hurting and violating is himself, and he has hardened himself to the point where he doesn’t even realize that.
The child in no way is the criminal, but actually the victim. If the child has hardened himself to that point, it has become an easy way for him to make a large amount of money in a short period of time.
Though they have “hardened” themselves it does obviously have an effect on them emotionally, sexually, and even physically.
Many of them become more withdrawn, more emotional and make inappropriate sexual gestures and comments more often. Their ideas of love and sex become warped and some even struggle with their own sexual identity.
Physically, sores may appear on their faces, hands and other places.
It is all around very damaging to the child and a child should never be put in a position where this is an option. In my mind, children are supposed to worry about who they are going to play with after school, who they want to be their friends, and other innocent things like this.
Making the decision of whether or not to go with a pervert to make money by performing sexual acts should never be a decision a child should have to make. It should not even be an option.
I know of children that have been used as young as six years old. All of this new information about the kids was troubling to me and not only did I learn more about how the kids were affected by it all, I also learned more about the bunnies.
I learned that there are organized forms and un-organized forms of this. Some of these bunnies may just get the idea and try it out once.
For others, they just do it every now and then, but others are “regular customers” and have quite a “professional” way of working.
For instance, they might drive by a certain point passing a child a few times. Then they would go and park on a desolate street, away from the ‘businesses against crime’ cameras, and the child would know to meet him there.
There are many individuals that “work” in different ways but in every case it is totally illegal.
Whether or not the child gives consent, it is absolutely illegal, not to mention wrong, to have sex or have any sexual contact with a minor (even arousing the child with words), and especially if the minor is given a form of “reward” or a sum of money.
With all of this information as ammunition, I started looking for answers to how I could begin to fight this battle.
I talked with my friend Faizel, who I knew had some connections with the police and the government. We looked into it a bit and saw that it was a really difficult thing to work with.
We talked to the police and they told us that it is very difficult to get a conviction in these cases. They said that they basically have to catch the guy in the act, which is extremely difficult, or get the kid within twenty-four hours of it happening and get a medical check up and evidence proving that the child had, in fact, been sexually abused.
Even with that, they still need DNA of the man somewhere in or on the child.
They told us that the mere testimony of a child was not enough and we should not even try to take a case forward if that is all we had. We saw that it was going to take more than just trying to do it case by case but we needed to try and get more of a grasp on how the thing works on a larger basis, even though majority of the men were just individuals and not organized.
We realized an investigation needed to be done.
We decided to approach the police’s intelligence unit about the whole situation and we scheduled a meeting with the head of crime intelligence.
Faizel and myself, along with the head of crime intelligence, the head of the child protection unit, a surveillance field officer, and two detectives sat down to try and figure out what could be done. I could see from the beginning that they were all intimidated by this whole topic, but they also seemed willing to help.
I don’t know if it was from my previous experience with police, but I was a bit sceptical of them all.
They decided to undergo a two-week investigation where they would look into the problem. We told them the different spots and areas in which these activities usually occur. We scheduled a follow-up meeting where they would inform us of their findings. The meeting was adjourned and we waited in excitement and anticipation for the follow-up meeting.
Two weeks rolled around and we went back to meet with the group.
I was astounded at their “discoveries”! Their so-called “investigation” consisted of the two detectives driving around on the two weekends with a digital camera. They would pull up to a group of kids, stop, hold the camera up and if the kids approached the car, they said that the kids tried to “sell themselves” to them.
They had a whole page full of digital pictures of several of the kids, all of whom I knew. The pictures were in no way a portrayal of the kids selling themselves but rather just kids posing for a photo.
I could not believe it!
One picture even had two boys holding up their dog and making him wave his paw. The detectives then tried to play it off and say that because the kids are “selling themselves” there is nothing they can do about it. They basically said, in more words, that they have more important things to investigate.
They tried to make the kids look like the criminals!! I was fuming!!
I questioned them on their investigation technique and I asked them specifically about the picture of the boys with the dog “So you are saying these two boys are trying to sell themselves?! Is the dog some kind of kinky sexual benefit? I find that hard to believe!”
I then went on to say that I felt like there is nothing more important than the life of the child and if the detectives say they have “bigger things” to worry about, then their priorities are messed up. I also informed them that even if a child “sells himself” it is still illegal for an adult to commit those acts with him.
I could not believe it!!!
To top it all off, the “more important” things were to investigate illegal fishermen, something that brings in a lot of money to the economy. I left that meeting frustrated and not knowing quite what to do.
Not too long after that, the Scorpions unit contacted us. The Scorpions, otherwise known as the Directorate of Special Operatives unit, is an elite unit that works under the National Prosecutor. They were formed to work on syndicates and big rings of crime.
They are detectives and prosecutors, so they investigate the crime, do the bust and then also take it to court themselves. They are the closest thing South Africa has to the FBI.
The Scorpions contacted us because they had heard about our struggles in finding support involving the whole situation. They had also heard about our meeting with the police so I think they might have even suspected some sort of police involvement in the whole thing, but that is just my own opinion.
They wanted to meet with us one night and get us to drive around with them, undercover, and show them the different active areas. We were not allowed to talk about them contacting us because this matter falls under police jurisdiction and they were worried that if the police heard about them getting involved, the police would try and stop them.
Plus, they are not really supposed to work on cases that are not proven rings of crime.
We were excited and hopeful because they had contacted us and we looked forward to meeting with them.
Faizel, myself, and a lady from another organization met them one Friday night. Travelling in three cars, we each rode around in a car with two Scorpions. We showed them the different areas and even sat and watched some of the kids for a while.
The funniest part was, even though I was in a car that was totally unrelated to me, with two men that I normally would not be with, and I was sitting low in the back seat with my face covered, except for my eyes, I was spotted by two kids. The two Scorpions could not believe it.
We passed by one older boys and he started shouting “Ryan!!” and waved his arms. The two Scorpions couldn’t believe that he had spotted me.
They turned quickly off of the street and went onto a back road that ended up leading back to that street. When we drove back by, the kid was standing there waiting and looking for the car. When we drove by him he chased after the car yelling, “RYAN!!” It happened again that night with another boy.
We drove around a little longer and then eventually met back up with the other two cars. They said that they would talk and then see what they could do from their side. They contacted us later and said that if we receive any information on particular instances and the kids were willing to testify, we could bring them to their office. We were excited and positive about that.
Not too long after that, one of the kids came to me with a particular instance. He told me about how three of his friends, who are daytime strollers, had been in Cape Town the day before and a white man came up to them and asked them if they wanted some food. They said yes and he told them that he would take them to McDonalds.
They went with him and then he went to the liquor store and bought some alcohol. He then told them that there was a McDonalds near where he lived and that he had a pool at his house and they could come over and swim and eat at his house. They were, of course, excited.
They went to his house, about a twenty-minute drive from downtown, and ate and then the man started giving them alcohol to drink. The boys drank and started to become drunk. The man started calling them, one by one, into his bedroom. He would order them to take off their clothes and he would start fondling them. He tried to get them to do the same with him and they refused.
He got angry at the smallest of the three boys and threw him into the pool. The kid hit his head on the bottom and it left a huge gash on his forehead. When he called the oldest of the three boys in, the boy got angry and hit the guy and they all ran away.
They felt like they had done something wrong so they were afraid to go to the police. That is why their friend approached me. I took their friend to the Scorpions office and we talked with one of them. He told me to try and get as much information as possible and bring them to the office the next day.
I managed to find the two younger boys and they showed me where the man lives. I took pictures of his house, I wrote down his address and I took pictures of his car and licence tags. I took pictures of the boys and especially the one boy’s injury, and I got their statements of what happened on tape.
Faizel and I went to the office the next day and gave it all to the Scorpion I had talked with the day before. He then said that all we needed to do was get the official statements of the three boys and he would call us back.
Faizel misunderstood what he meant and so he said we should pick up the boys and go to the child protection unit and get the statements. We found the kids and went to the child protection unit. We waited for a while and finally they started taking the statements of the kids. Right in the middle of it, Faizel got a call from one of the Scorpions who was furious to hear that we were at the child protection unit (a branch of the police).
She hung up with him and called me immediately. She asked me if I was with him and I said yes, and she said that we had blown the whole thing and that there was no way they could work with us anymore. They didn’t take that individual case forward and although they investigated the man a little bit, they did not get much on him. That was the last we heard from the Scorpions for awhile.
But I was not going to give up.
I then decided I would start doing my own investigating and then if I got enough information on an individual, I would just hand it over to the police. I started going out every night, driving up to the mountain, taking down the licence plate numbers of suspicious looking cars. I also tried to stake out and watch the kids.
The difficult part was trying to not be spotted by the kids. This made for some humorous times!
One evening, Faizel and I went out. I had borrowed a friend’s car and I wore all black clothes, with a black bandana over my face and a black beanie over my head. I looked like a ninja! The only thing showing was my eyes. We pulled up to a popular area for these activities to occur, near two gay clubs, and saw a guy talking to a kid.
We got out of the car. I was standing, with my back to one of the clubs, watching the man talking to one of the kids in the parking lot of a petrol station. He was making plans of some sort with the kid.
I just happened to glance behind me. The bouncer of the club and someone who appeared to be the manager were looking at me. The manager had just ended a conversation on his cell phone. I got a weird feeling so I met Faizel back at the car.
Right when we got in the car and started to drive off, the police screamed up with their lights on. They stopped in front of the club right as we were driving off and the bouncer pointed to our car.
We drove on and two police cars pulled up; one sped up and got in front of us and the other pulled up beside us and started forcing us off the road. They got out with their guns out, pointed at our car. They thought we were going to rob the petrol station. We explained what we were doing and that the reason I was dressed like that was because the kids would recognize me.
They thought it was funny and, fortunately, were able to just laugh at the whole situation and false alarm.
Faizel and I drove around a little more that night but didn’t really get that much information. It did however prove to be a memorable and exciting evening.
Since those early times we have seen these acts continue in Cape Town. Few of the bunnies have been caught and the ones that have, have always gotten off on easy sentences.
One case involved two brothers that were ages six and ten at the time. An owner of a video shop would let them come in, after hours, and watch movies. He would show them pornographic movies and then tell them to copy, with him, what they had seen on the video.
He did this on a regular basis. He was caught, convicted and less than a year later he was out and back in Cape Town. The boys have to see him in town on a regular basis.
There are other cases that we were informed about where the bunnies were “powerful” men, and because of their status, their cases would be dropped with no punishment.
With one of these, they even had a kid that had given graphic testimony of what this man had done to him. The difference with this man was that he would also do it against the will of the kids. He would invite them into his house and then lock the door and try and force himself on the children. He was also extremely violent and was known to hit the kids if they “did it wrong”. The case went forward and nothing happened to him and he is still a free man to this day.
We slowly built back contact with the Scorpions and one of them was interested in starting a unit that specifically deals with child sex offenders. They would mostly work on child trafficking but would also make time for the individual cases. We had a meeting about it and the slow process was underway.
To this day, we still have not heard much about what is happening with that special unit. They worked with us again on a case with a German man that had been caught with two boys.
One day I got a call from a police station about an hour away from Cape Town. They said that they had two boys there and a German man that had molested them. One of the boys had given them my number and they wanted to know if I could come to the station and bring the kids’ parents.
One of the kid’s mom is dead but I picked up his Aunt and we went to the police station. One of the boys had been with the man on several occasions and the man paid him more money every time. This time, the two boys went along with the man, and after they had done the sexual acts with him, he said he wasn’t going to pay them.
They escaped from him, managed to get to a traffic police officer and they were able to catch the man. They took the boys’ statements. Because the one boy’s guardian was not there, I had to read the statement and sign it as his guardian. It was the boy that had been with him several times and it made me sick to read the statement, with both the boy and the German man sitting in the same room as me!
After they had taken down both statements, we went to the doctor and he did the medical report. Late that night I drove the kids home.
The inspector told me that the case was weak and I found out that there is not actually a charge in South Africa for this type of sexual offence. Instead, they charge the perpetrator with indecent assault, which is an extremely weak charge.
The German sat in jail for a few weeks awaiting trial and then was able to pay bail once it was set. The kids called me and told me that they saw him on a daily basis in Cape Town and not only was he with other boys, but he had even tried to talk one of their friend’s into going with him.
I called the inspector telling him about what was happening, and he said that if we got statements from those kids, he could get the bail taken away. I made an appointment with him and the kids to meet on two different occasions but he didn’t show up for either.
I then decided, on my own, to get whatever information I could on the German. The boys gave me the make and model of the car he was driving and the license plate number. Faizel and I called the car rental place and got his address, which was incorrect, and his cell phone number.
We decided to try and find him and watch him for a little while. Faizel disguised his voice and called the guy and asked where he was and said he would like to meet with him. The German told him that he was at the Waterfront and even told him exactly where he could find him.
We went to the Waterfront and found his car in the parking lot and I parked close to it. Faizel called him back and said that he had gotten tied up and would call him later to set up another time to meet.
We waited for him to come out and then followed him all the way to the area he was living in. He first stopped at a popular pick-up point for gay men. They park their cars in a particular parking lot and then walk down onto the beach and perform sexual acts with each other. I figured that he lived nearby.
I told Faizel to call him and set up a time that they could meet in the week and in passing, ask where he lived. Faizel did it and the guy not only agreed to meet, but he told Faizel his exact address. We went later that night just to make sure and, sure enough, his car was parked there.
We then came up with an identity for Faizel as a business man from Saudi Arabia (he looks the part) who is also interested in doing sexual things with little boys, but had not been able to figure out how since he had been in Cape Town, and in inquiring about it, was given the German’s number.
We decided to go to the Scorpions because we didn’t want to get in trouble for entrapment and we wanted whatever information we got to be used against the German in court. They agreed to do a joint undercover investigation, with them, the police, and us.
They got all the appropriate papers done and then signed Faizel up as an undercover agent for that case, and we continued on with the first meeting between Faizel and the German.
The first meeting went well. The German admitted to doing things with young boys and even told the ages he preferred, which are 12 to 16. He also said that he not only picks up boys in town, but that he is also involved with an organization in one of the townships, and he gets boys from there too.
He seemed open to give more information at a more discreet location and asked Faizel if he would meet him on the following Sunday and they could go for a long drive and do some site seeing. Faizel agreed.
After the meeting we went back to the Scorpions’ office where we found out that not only was the recording device ineffective because they had hooked the microphone into the headphone hole, but also, they did not want Faizel to meet on Sunday because they felt it was “too soon”.
I disagreed and knew that if we cancelled that meeting it would cause suspicion. They made Faizel call him and reschedule it for the coming week, in which they also ended up cancelling. I was furious because I saw the case going down the drain.
Faizel was going out of the country on vacation for two weeks and things were going to totally stand still while he was gone.
He told the German that he had to go on a business trip and he would call him when he got back. Because of internal politics, when Faizel got back, the whole case basically fell apart. I was frustrated but not surprised.
These are just some of the many struggles I have had with this whole situation. There have been times when I have seriously considered vigilante-type actions against these pedophiles, but I realize that if I get arrested, I will not serve any good behind bars.
My mind cannot grasp what a grown man gets out of doing these sexual things with young boys. What bothers me the most is the damage that it does to the boys, whether they realize it at the time or not.
Though it has been difficult and I have seen little progress in the situation as a whole, I refuse to give up. I will not stand and watch as grown men rape and molest children, whether they are paying for it or not.
As long as I can speak, I will speak out against it. Even when all hope in finding a solution seems gone, I will continue to fight against this as long as I am in South Africa.