“Corrective rape” increasing in South Africa

The Guardian and others have been reporting on the growing trend in South Africa where lesbians are raped and beaten in efforts to “correct” or “cure” their sexual orientation. And the authorities are not doing much about it.
After Eudy Simelane, the leading player on the Banyana Banyana national female soccer team was brutally raped and murdered last April, more awareness has been raised, but the prevalence of this horrific trend has only grown with it. One lesbian and gay support group in Cape Town says they get 10 new cases of “corrective rape” every week. And that’s just in Cape Town.
And many of these cases result in murder, but with a barely existent conviction rate; there has only been one conviction out of 31 reported cases in the last decade. (The number of actual incidences are predicted to be much higher.)
In response, ActionAid and others have released a report, Hate Crimes: the rise of corrective rape in South Africa, bringing to light the prevalence of the “practice” as well as the failure of the South African legal system to take recourse; hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation is not recognized under South African law. On sentencing of Simelan’s case, the judge said that her orientation had “no significance” in the murder.
Check out The Guardian’s video of interviews with some survivors. (Trigger warning.)