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　　If you get assaulted in Gauteng and are treated at a hospital, don't expect to end up in court seeing the perpetrator convicted. Thousands of crucial medical examination documents, which are vital evidence, are piling up at hospitals around the province.

　　They are not getting to the police investigators or public prosecutors who need them to secure convictions against batterers, abusers and other thugs.

　　Worryingly, there is uncertainty between police and emergency-room medical staff about the procedures to be followed in dealing with the forms. And in the meantime, nothing gets done.

　　A J88 form is filled in by doctors after ascertaining assault victims' injuries. Police investigation hinges on it. Without a J88, a case can't be forwarded for prosecution, nor can it be closed.

　　According to doctors, many of these forms are piling up at hospital casualty wards waiting for the police to pick them up. Doctors say they have been told not to give the forms to patients after completion because they might be altered before the police see them.

　　Professor Ken Boffard, head of the Johannesburg hospital's trauma unit, says he has over 1 000 completed J88 forms in his unit, some having been there for two to three years. The police admit that these forms are essential to any assault case, and insist that doctors should send them back in sealed envelopes.

　　The Saturday Star told the Gauteng police's Director Henriette Bester about the doctors' dilemma and she took the matter to provincial commissioner Sharma Maharaj and the head of detectives, Assistant Commissioner Godfrey Lebeya, who said they would take immediate action.

　　"Commissioner Lebeya is to meet with the detectives to find a solution... a policy that will be communicated to hospitals to make sure there is an end to this problem. In both Soweto and Johannesburg, we have not been able to find a written agreement on this."

　　Bester said that as far as she knew, complainants have to get the J88 from the police, have it filled in by the doctor who treated them, and then return it in a sealed envelope to the police.

　　But Boffard was adamant. He said they had been given instructions by the police about seven years ago not to give the forms back to the complainants because, before handing them over, some of them were adding injuries to those which doctors had included on the form.

　　"So we have been storing them for the police to collect," he said. This is what happens in all the provincial and private hospitals with trauma units, with the exception of Chris Hani Baragwanath, which has its own satellite police station.

　　"Police say they are too busy to pick them up. It isn't their fault because we know they are doing the best they can," Boffard said.

　　He added that a solution would be to get a police reservist to go around the hospitals once a week, pick up the forms and take them to the specific police station. "Either that, or satellite stations at all the bigger hospitals."

　　Dr Adrienne Wulfsohn, head of Sunninghill hospital's trauma unit, said the hospital was experiencing the same problem with assault cases, except for rape cases.

　　"With sexual assault, police usually come here to take statements and leave with the J88s. But with other assaults, patients come with the forms, and if we give them back to them, defence lawyers would crush it in court.

　　"But if they leave them or the police to collect them, they can sit here for a year."

　　All the doctors concerned were very supportive of the young policemen on the beat, saying they were doing their best but were overworked.