Post by @justadvocacy1

A four-month-old baby girl has been found dead in Atteridgeville, west of Pretoria, hours after she was taken from her mother during what police say was presented as a ritual. Gauteng police spokesperson Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi confirmed that the child was found buried in a shallow grave. The pastor’s 24-year-old wife, now in custody, led investigators to the site. A 45-year-old pastor remains at large. Police have opened a case of murder, kidnapping and rape. The mother and her daughter were not strangers to the couple. All of them live in Diepsloot. They attended the same church. The mother had known the pastor and his wife for about three years. On Wednesday, around midday, she went with them to the Hennops River near the R511. She was told they were there to perform a ritual. According to Nevhuhulwi, the couple said the baby was tired, so the pastor’s wife stayed with the child while the pastor took the mother into the river. That is where he allegedly raped her. She was tied up and left struggling to free herself. The pastor and his wife then left with the baby. What remained at the scene was a pink school bag and a white doek. The mother managed to untie herself and ran to a nearby construction site for help. Workers who spoke to eNCA described a frantic search: people poured out of the site and into the woods after a woman arrived crying that her child had been taken. Private security was activated. Police were alerted. It was not enough. By evening the infant was dead, and one of the people who had taken her had shown detectives where she had been buried. This is not a private tragedy that ends at the riverbank. A mother trusted people she had known through a church for three years. She was asked to bring her baby to a place of prayer and ritual. She was allegedly assaulted, restrained and robbed of her child. The child did not survive the day. Faith communities are supposed to be places of refuge, especially for women and infants. When that trust is used as the route to rape, abduction and murder, the harm reaches far beyond one family in Diepsloot. It tells other women that the person who prays with them may be the person who binds them. It tells parents that a ritual invitation can be a trap. The manhunt for the pastor must stay urgent. The arrested woman must be properly investigated, not treated as a footnote. The mother needs protection, medical care and a justice system that does not lose this file once the cameras leave Atteridgeville. Cases like this fail when communities stay silent, when churches do not ask hard questions of the people who lead them, and when police treat violence against women and children as routine. A four-month-old does not consent to a ritual. She cannot run to a construction site. She depended entirely on the adults around her. One of those adults is in custody. Another is still free. South Africa cannot keep burying infants and calling it fate. #JustAdvocacy #JusticeForTheBaby #EndGBV #Atteridgeville #ProtectOurChildren