ALLEGED BEATING OF NATIVE GIRLS

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25247, 28 July 1947, Page 7

ALLEGED BEATING OF NATIVE GIRLS

59 CHARGES AGAINST MISSIONARY (Rec. 9 p.m.) SHABANI (Southern Rhodesia). July 26. Allegations that native girls aged 10 to 18 were beaten with a sjambok, some on the bare buttocks, by a British missionary, were made in the Shabani Court when Reginald Stephen Garfield Todd, superintendent of the Dadaya Mission, appeared for preparatory examination on 59 charges of assault. Todd came from New Zealand to Rhodesia in 1934. and is a member of’ the Rhodesian Parliament to which he was elected in 1946. The Dadaya Mission is the only mission in Rhodesia supported by New Zealand churches. Dr. M. B. Millerick gave evidence that he had examined 53 native girls attending the mission. All bore bruises, cuts, or weals on the buttocks or thighs. Several of the girls testified that they had been beaten for refusing drill. The hearing was adjourned. The British United Press correspondent at Shabani says that one girl witness testified that “Todd caught me by the neck, pushed me on to a table, lifted my dress and struck me six times with a sjambok.” The other girls testified that they had received, two, fbur, or six strokes, depending on their age. The correspondent adds that two davg after the date of the all«ged beatings 209 boys surrounded Todd's house i and stoned it. Forty-five of the boys were later fined £3 each, in default one month’s imprisonment with hard I labour, on charges of public violence. ■