Twitter meetup results in child rape

A 13-year-old girl has been raped by a 45-year-old man she allegedly met on Twitter.

The young girl had reportedly skipped school to meet up with the accused at her parents home in an affluent suburb of Pretoria, South Africa.

“When the girl opened the door, she realised that the man was a lot older than he had pretended to be online”, police spokesperson Captain Marissa van der Merwe told the Beeld newspaper.

The girl then tried to close the door, but the man forced it open.

“She tried to get away from him, but was unable to, and he raped her,” said Van Der Merwe.

The accused has reportedly appeared in court twice, although no charge has been formally laid against him.

South Africa has a high number of rapes every year, with those enabled by social networks drawing headlines.

In 2011, a man known as “The Facebook Rapist” came to the country’s attention. The man would pose as a businessman and contact women on the social network interested in modelling and fashion work.

At least part of his moniker came from the status updates he would post to taunt the police. According to reports, some of his updates on Facebook have included him saying that he had “just pirated a local movie How to steal 2-million let me go and educate myself,” and “Wow, I got 200 friendship request in 15mins, I wonder why? Yawn…,” and how he “likes being surrounded by hot girls”.

More recently, a video showing seven boys raping a mentally disabled teenage girl shocked the national psyche, especially when it was revealed that it had been widely spread among children in the Gauteng suburb of Soweto.