“Dear Santa, please can I live by Bobbi Bear forever … please also make all my pain go away before Christmas.” This heartbreaking plea from an eight-year-old girl in KwaZulu-Natal captures the reality facing dozens of children who turn to Operation Bobbi Bear for safety every year. The child penned her letter shortly after she was removed from her home, where her father allegedly raped her. She is now in the care of Operation Bobbi Bear, a human rights organisation in Amanzimtoti that runs a rapid-response service for sexually-abused children.
Speaking to TimesLIVE, Bobbi Bear director Eureka Olivier said the number of children in their care over the festive season changes daily. “We’re an emergency organisation. The police, hospitals and the community bring children to us or we’re called out to fetch them from different areas.
Some stay for one night. Some stay three nights. Some stay a week.
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It all depends on the social workers and also the arrest of the perpetrator in the family,” she said. When a child has been raped at home, returning them to that environment is not an option, she said. “After the medicals and police statements, the child comes to Bobbi Bear and stays safely with us until a permanent plan can be made.
We work with social workers to reunite them with family, maybe an aunt or uncle in another province who had no idea the abuse was happening.” Olivier said her eyes filled with tears when she read the eight-year-old’s letter. “I look in her eyes and I see the real raw pain of a childhood ripped away from her at the tender age of eight years. We can never ‘fix’ what he did to her.
We can make sure justice is done and we can certainly keep her safe, love her and remind her that what he did to her was not her fault, she did nothing to deserve this.” She said while families excitedly plan Christmas lunch and wrapping of presents, Bobbi Bear has to plan how many rape bags need to be packed, check the food cupboards and fridges and see how low its stock is. At the moment 14 children are living on the property. “At least 10 of them will be here on Christmas Day.
They won’t be going anywhere,” she said. Olivier said the festive season brings a predictable rise in violence. “Every year, without fail, we see an increase in rape and physical abuse.
There’s domestic violence in the home, there’s alcohol flowing, Christmas parties, work parties. Parents get drunk, go home and there are fights. It’s always the children who suffer.”
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