Manipulatable Sexual Assault Kits blamed for low conviction rates

Every year, hundreds of women in Botswana muster extraordinary courage to walk into police stations to report being raped.

For many, it is the hardest decision of their lives: to face the shame, the stigma, the whispers of neighbours, and the fear of reliving their trauma in cold police rooms. Yet they go, believing the system will protect them.

Instead, conviction rates for sexual offences are dismally low. Fewer than half of the cases that make it to trial result in guilty verdicts, while many more collapse quietly – withdrawn, dismissed, or lost in a fog of delays.

Survivors who dared to speak are left to watch their attackers walk free, sometimes back into the same neighbourhoods and schools, while their own lives remain scarred.

Behind every collapsed case is a woman condemned to carry unhealed wounds, a woman forced to live in fear next to the man who violated her, and a community that concludes rape is never really punished.

The Botswana Guardian studies this crime, which, like corruption, has become complex. Latest reports have raised explosive allegations that some Botswana Police Service (BPS) officers are

colluding with suspects to manipulate rape-case evidence effectively “selling” cases for money.

Official data tell part of the story: UNICEF reports roughly one in 10 Botswana girls aged 13–17 have suffered sexual violence (10.4 percent of females; 4.1 percent of males), yet conviction rates remain low.

Sources within the prosecution at Botswana Police Service and Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP) argue that Sexual Assault Evidence kits can be vital for rape prosecutions, but only if handled impeccably.

International norms insist on a scrupulous chain of custody for such material. Interpol’s Manual stresses that a proper chain of custody “verifies that the evidence was handled carefully and has not been damaged, tampered with, or changed in any way.”

Likewise, an Interpol review warns that rape evidence is easily challenged in court and “chain of custody evidence needs to be thorough and valid” (Interpol 2010).

UNFPA’s Botswana guidelines for gender-violence cases similarly command that “chain of custody guidelines must be adhered to” when collecting forensic evidence.

Best-practice models, such as those used in South African jurisdictions, include sealed containers, tamper-evident bagging, and numbered seals to prevent unnoticed opening or tampering with samples.

In many US states, protocols require kits to be sealed in a way that any attempt to open them leaves clear visual evidence of tampering and detailed chain-of-custody logs tracking every handler and transfer. By comparison, sources familiar with Botswana’s forensic system assert that local kits lack such tamper-evident safeguards.

According to one anonymous forensic scientist with experience in the SADC region, “Sexual Assault Evidence kits used by Botswana Police are not tamper-evident; they can be reopened and resealed without leaving a trace, as the seals used are not tamper-evident but rather ordinary seals.” The scientist argues that this omission appears intentional: “That design gap creates room for business. An officer can manipulate evidence, effectively collapsing the case. Evidence isn’t sealed in a tamper-proof manner, so the integrity is questionable.”

The Botswana Network on Ethics, Law and HIV/AIDS (BONELA) has repeatedly criticised police failures in sexual assault investigations. In a March 2024 press statement, BONELA lamented the release of suspects due to procedural lapses, describing it as “a failure in the system of reporting and administration of child sexual assault cases”.

The Lobatse missing-child case of 2022 dealt public confidence in the Police a further blow. Seven-year-old Tlotso Karema went missing from his home in March 2022, and two weeks later, human bones were found outside Lobatse.

Police announced DNA tests identified the bones as Tlotso’s, but the family rejected the findings. The child’s mother told The Voice newspaper at the time that the skull was “too big to be my son’s” and the jawbone “did not resemble that of a child” her son’s age.

“The Botswana Police Service (BPS) notes the issues raised and allegations of possible manipulation of evidence by police officers. However, we are not aware of such allegations. We, however, posit that regarding Forensic evidence, there are measures taken to manage any risks, including possible evidence manipulation,” Botswana Police Public Relations Officer, Assistant Commissioner Near Bagali, said.

He explained that such measures include the use of standardised packaging materials, such as sexual assault evidence collection kits and reference collection kits.

According to Bagali, these are standard kits used by industry leaders in forensic science around the world and are commercially available from reputable manufacturers.

The police spokesperson stated that the kits use a double-zip lock mechanism to secure the evidence. This, he said, ensures that only medical practitioners during the collection of evidence, at local health facilities, as well as Botswana Police Forensic Laboratory analysts during analysis, are the only personnel allowed by the system to open the kits.

“Once collection is done, tamper-evident seals are used to further secure the evidence, administered at the point of collection, ensuring that tampering between collection and analysis would be detected.

This therefore makes it highly unlikely that once collected by the medical practitioner, a police officer, or any person who comes into contact with the evidence, could manipulate the evidence without any trace.”

According to Bagali, at the Botswana Police Forensic Laboratory, the evidence is examined for any anomalies, including tamper evidence on seals, quality of the packaging, chain of custody before registration, and analysis.

This ensures that the integrity of evidence is maintained, leading to its acceptance at courts of law. The Botswana Police Service also has policies against the manipulation of evidence and other forms of misconduct and investigates any such allegations.

He assured the public that the BPS is a professional law enforcement agency that continually strives to operate within the confines of the law and international best practices.