Rape survivor uses her own horrific experience to support others

On a late-April morning in 2021, Tarryn Lokotsch was brutally attacked and raped while on a run close to her home in Mataffin, Mbombela.

While in intensive care at a local hospital, she met Barbara Kenyon, founder of the Greater Nelspruit Rape Intervention Project Group (GRIP). After receiving counselling from Kenyon and learning more about the organisation’s work through her own recovery process, Lokotsch gained a passion for its cause.

Returning to work, Lokotsch found her job as an accountant “trivial”. “When you experience something like that, it’s very hard to just go back to normal life, because everyone is upset. But their lives go on while you just stay stuck in this state of shock and trauma and questions,” she says.

So, when Kenyon asked Lokotsch to become the new chief executive of GRIP in 2022, she agreed. “I could never just have gone on with my normal life knowing the system is so broken,” she says.

She describes the role as extremely challenging as GRIP deals with up to 10 cases a day. Some are quite personal for her because of her own experience.

“I have to just be professional and remember that it’s not about me or what happened to me – it’s about our survivors,” she says. “I have to use my own challenges, my own story and the gaps that I identified in the processes following that to help other people.”

Lokotsch recounts a lack of empathy being shown to her by officials in the aftermath of her assault. She was required to accompany investigating officers to the crime scene, a bend in the Crocodile River near Mbombela Stadium.

“I had to walk through where I was dragged to the ground and hurt so badly, and turned to see one officer eating a pie and the other drinking flavoured milk while asking me questions,” Lokotsch says. The process was “almost as traumatic and frustrating as the actual assault itself”.

This inspired her to participate in making the aftermath of sexual and domestic violence “at least a bit easier, more gentle and more caring”.

“You get so angry that you feel like you need to either emigrate to physically get away from where things happened, or use the only other option: to stay, let it light a fire inside of yourself and be part of the fight,” she says.

Where the cracks show

Lokotsch says some of the problems in South Africa’s handling of gender-based violence (GBV) are a lack of education on the issue – for everyone involved – and the stigma that surrounds such assaults.

“Until you actually become a rape victim yourself, it’s not something you think about. Honestly, I can admit that I’d never thought it would happen to me, being a middle-class woman with a good job, family and a balanced life.”

Several issues stand out for her in terms of education about GBV. The first is that it’s important for women who have been assaulted to know that it’s in their best interest to go to a hospital with a medical forensic unit and employees qualified to do a forensic examination. This way, evidence can be collected that can be used if the perpetrator is caught.

GRIP addresses issues of ignorance through posting on social media and doing talks at schools and in communities to educate people on their rights, what GBV is and what to do if they experience it. Lokotsch also believes all police should receive sensitivity training to deal with survivors appropriately.

She bemoans the treatment of GBV as a “flavour of the week”, and says it should always be highlighted – not just during campaigns such as the 16 Days of Activism.

The lack of government funding for GBV-centred organisations is also a massive issue, especially since many of them lost much of their funding due to cuts to USAID and other US grants this year.

“At a parliamentary and government level, there are a lot of words and a lot of talking, but where is the action?” Lokotsch asks. “At GRIP, we’re all about action – a quick meeting, then actually going out, actioning and making physical, measurable differences in the lives of survivors and communities.”

She adds that community organisations and people working at clinics and hospitals “know a lot of the answers to the questions that the government has, but they aren’t being consulted”. A starting point to address an issue “so deeply entrenched in South African communities that a simple solution is impossible” is the government consulting with “the people on the ground, like GRIP”.

Operating throughout Mpumalanga, GRIP has branches in Mashishing, Mkhondo, White River-Mbombela and Kabokweni, among others. In addition to providing shelters for women in danger, GRIP identifies and accompanies survivors to support them all the way from police stations to hospitals and court. It helps them through issues such as the trauma caused by many forensic nurses being males, who “may resemble the perpetrator that harmed them and cause a state of shock”. This is an aspect that Lokotsch says the government simply doesn’t think of.

In terms of what causes GBV, Lokotsch says the sky-high unemployment rate is inextricably linked to its prevalence, with “so many women staying and putting up with violence so that they can have a home, food and their kids in school. And then those kids learn that the violence is normal and the cycle continues.”

In many poor and rural communities, this is particularly true, as “women are so often reliant on their abuser”. Because of fear, they often miss the 72-hour window of reporting an incident to gain access to HIV/Aids testing and emergency contraceptives.

Lokotsch says the big questions of how to solve lingering patriarchal laws existing in rural communities, the lack of education and high unemployment will need to be answered before GBV can be ended. But this will only be possible if the government collaborates with GRIP and other similarly purposed organisations.

In the meantime, she continues to lead GRIP in helping to deal with the crisis, one survivor at a time. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.