AT least 15 children under the age of 18 have been raped since the beginning of the year.
These statistics are according to cases that were officially reported to the police across the country.
The latest case was reported in Mankayane on January 21, where a four-year-old girl was raped allegedly by her 18-year-old neighbour. The incident happened at Nhlotjeni in December.
Sources close to the matter said the four-year-old and other minors usually went to the 18-year-old man’s home to play.
All seemed normal until early last week when the four-year-old girl’s mother overheard some children older than her daughter discussing what the teenager did to them when they went to play at his home.
Surprised, the mother is said to have then called her daughter aside and asked her what happened to them when they were playing at the neighbour’s home.
“The girl narrated that they were violated by the 18-year-old. Her mother reported the matter to the police, while parents and guardians of the rest of the children said they were still to discuss the matter,” said a source.
The suspect has not been arrested yet, as confirmed by Acting Deputy Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Inspector Mazwi Ndzimandze.
This case is at least the 15th to be reported to the police this month.
The cases reportedly happened in various areas in all four regions of the country.
The Lubombo region leads with six cases, followed by the Manzini and Hhohho regions with four cases each.
Only one case has so far been reported in the Shiselweni region.
More than half of the survivors of abuse are under 14 years, while at least four are aged 10 or below, indicating extreme vulnerability among younger children.
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In the majority of the cases, the alleged perpetrators are known to the victims, including relatives such as uncles, cousins, stepfathers, neighbours, and boyfriends.
This points to abuse occurring largely within trusted environments such as homes, family settings and neighbourhoods, as previously articulated by SWAGAA in its latest report (December 2025).
The report states that abuse was most prevalent in private and domestic settings.
The home was identified as a primary site, with nearly three-quarters of all 53 December 2025 incidents (73%) reported to have occurred within a home.
For this month’s reported cases, in the Hhohho region, Pigg’s Peak recorded multiple cases, including that of a 10-year-old girl raped in a forest at Hlane during the course of last year, and two more cases involving girls aged nine and 11 that happened this month.
In another case, an eight-year-old girl of Mpolonjeni in Siteki was raped allegedly by her 27-year-old uncle in December.
Meanwhile, the Matsapha police arrested a 17-year-old boy who allegedly abused his 10-year-old cousin while at Mathangeni.
At Elangeni, a 14-year-old girl was reportedly raped several times between January 19 and 22 allegedly by her 25-year-old boyfriend, who was later arrested for the offence.
In Siphofaneni, a five-year-old girl was raped on New Year’s Day at Mamisa by a known person.
Other cases were reported in Tshaneni, Malkerns, Siteki, Mbabane and Hluthi, involving survivors as young as four and as old as 17.
In Malkerns, police arrested a 37-year-old man for allegedly raping his stepdaughter repeatedly over a two-year period.
All the reports involve multiple incidents over time, suggesting ongoing abuse that went undetected or unreported for months or even years.
These cases underscore a disturbing pattern of sexual violence against minors characterised by familiar perpetrators and repeated abuse.
