Dutch woman, 66, assaulted, raped at home

Witbank - An unnamed 66-year-old Dutch woman is in critical condition at the Life Health Cosmos-Hospital's intensive care unit after she was viciously assaulted and gang-raped during an armed attack at her Witbank home.

The woman had settled in South Africa from the Netherlands only a few years earlier.

She was attacked on Tuesday July 29 2008 at around 6.30am.

Police captain Eddie Hall said that a week earlier, her living room window was smashed by a group of black men who had then fled without stealing anything.

This window had since been repaired - but yesterday, police found that it was carefully removed from its frame and placed undamaged against a wall.

East Rand-Beeld journalist Aletta Otto reports that the hospital staff describe her condition as 'critical' and that she is being kept alive on life-support machines.