But it is also one of the most tragic stories of neglect and abuse of a mentally handicapped teenager in one of the country's biggest townships.
Yesterday, South Africans awoke to a brutal story: a 17-year-old with the mental ability of a five-year-old had been gang-raped by seven young men who had offered her R2 for their violent pleasure.
Exacerbating her humiliation, they had video-taped the brutal attack and the images have since gone viral across the country.
Police are investigating the existence of a second video of another rape of the girl.
This is a story of complicity, gender violence and neglect in Soweto and is, in all likelihood - to varying degrees - representative of what so very often happens to girls and women at the hands of this nation's men.
The complicity lies in the fact that a community knew this teenager, a child really, and must have known she had previously disappeared for weeks on end. She had apparently been raped several times since 2009. But no one seems to have found it necessary to report this to the authorities.
Then there is the mother, whom police initially said might be investigated for alleged neglect.
She had initially told the media and police that she had reported her daughter missing but had been turned away.
But when Gauteng community safety MEC Faith Mazibuko demanded answers from senior Soweto officers yesterday, she was told the mother's claim was a "blatant lie".
Soweto police cluster commander Major-General Nkanyiso Maphango said: "She has reported her daughter's four previous disappearances, but not this one.
SOURCE OF THE NEWS:www.timelive.c.za
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