Police blame church stupidity for pack rape

December 2 2002

Police are furious at a church leader who held an outdoor night-time prayer session in PNG's crime-ridden capital, from which a teenage girl was abducted and pack-raped.

The 17-year-old girl was abducted before dawn on Saturday from among a group of Christians who had gathered to pray on a hill in the suburbs of Port Moresby.

The group was worshipping when attacked by a gang of youths, who abducted the pastor's daughter and another girl.

In the struggle the pastor was hit with an axe but managed to save his own daughter. But the other girl was taken to another hill, where she was pack-raped.

Police were furious with the pastor for holding a night-time prayer session in the lawless city.

Provincial Police Commander Geoffrey Vaki said he had told the church group they were responsible for the attack. "I'm very angry because the church group should not go to the hill when they already know that the place is unsafe," Vaki told The National newspaper.

The newspaper agreed with police, accusing the prayer group of "sheer stupidity".

"What in Heaven's name persuaded the pastor of this group to lead his flock up a notorious hill in Gerehu at that hour?" the newspaper asked in its editorial. "Did they imagine the apparent sanctity of their purpose would safeguard them from any evil?"

This was one of two horrendous rapes reported at the weekend in Port Moresby. In the other case a teenage girl was at a second-hand clothes market when she was raped by two men. It was understood many other shoppers failed to intervene in the attack, which occurred in broad daylight.

Port Moresby suffers from massive poverty, unemployment and crime. While there are notorious danger areas in the city, there are few safe areas - in particular for the masses who do not own cars.

As a result Papua New Guineans are often the victims of murder, rape, armed hold-ups and beatings by unemployed youths.

Increasing crime and the country's worsening economic prognosis has resulted in many expatriate workers readying to leave PNG this Christmas.

AAP