Kylie was crying hard now. I held her in my arms. She cried and cried and I didn’t know what to do. After some minutes she stopped and sat up, facing away from me. “I’ll be fine, Gosego. You don’t need to worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

“What happened on the date? Why didn’t you come to school today?”

“I can’t go to school anymore.”

“Why? You need to. More than ever I see that you need to. School will help you get out of all of this.”

“I can’t, Gosego, you don’t understand.” Her eyes were filling with tears again. Something happened on that date.

“What is it? What did Kago do?” I asked.

She shook her head. She didn’t want to say. “You need to tell me,” I said. “I can help you.”

“No, you can’t Gosego. Not this time. You’ve been wonderful to me. You’ve been the best friend ever. But this time you can’t fix it.”

“You don’t know that. Tell me. What did Kago do?”

She was suddenly calm. She looked across the park where a young mother walked with a small child. She turned back. Her face was set and her eyes dull.

“He raped me. There was no date. He met me at the corner. We walked some distance and he pushed me into an alley. He raped me and his friends watched. One filmed it with his phone. It was all stupid. The dress, my hair. I was stupid. What was I thinking? There was no date. Of course there was no date. I’m this girl. The girl with a father who’s a drunk and a sister who’s a prostitute. I’m a nothing girl, a rubbish girl. No-one wants a rubbish girl.”

I stood up, suddenly furious. “No! No never! Don’t say that again. You are not a rubbish girl. You’re kind and smart and lovely. Kago is rubbish, not you! He needs to be punished for what he did to you.”

“What’s the use? Even if he is punished I will still be raped. Isn’t it? What does it matter?”

“It matters! He and his rubbish friends need to be shown that what they did was wrong. It was wrong Kylie!”

She was very calm now, eerily calm. She looked out over the park. “Yes it was wrong.”

I took her by the shoulders. “Listen. Tomorrow I’m coming for you. We’re going to the police. We’re going to turn them in. They’re going to be punished. OK?”

She nodded her head. I hugged her and we parted. We agreed to meet in the morning.

*****

I found Kylie the next morning waiting for me at the corner hardware shop. She didn’t want me seeing more of her house, which was OK. She was huddled inside a big coat but she looked no better than the day before. If anything, she looked worse. Her eyes were sunk in her head, and surrounded by dark circles.

At the police station we found a man behind the desk. “What can I do for you girls today?” He seemed friendly.

Kylie kept quiet so I said, “We need to report a rape.”

“Rape? That’s a serious charge there girly. You don’t think you have it a bit wrong? Maybe you and your little boyfriend got in a fight and you want to teach him a lesson. We get a lot of that here.”

An angry-faced older woman came over and the man said in a loud voice so that everyone in the station could hear. “These girls say they want to report a rape, Esther.”

People looked at us. The policewoman called Esther said, “You girls like to come and play us for fools. You play around with boys and then when they want to break up with you, you come here and say he raped you. Why don’t you two go home and think a bit more and then if you still think it’s rape you come back and we’ll help you out.”

I tried to respond but Kylie turned and ran out of the door, so I turned and followed her.

***

Tell us what you think: What’s your opinion of the attitude of the police? What should they have done differently?