3 NZLR 709; KR and others v Bryn Alyn Community (Holdings) Ltd (in liquidation) and another [2003] QB 1441 (CA); see also Dube v Banana 1999 (1) BCLR 44 (ZH). [2] This is the first case of the kind in South Africa of which I am aware. It commenced in the Cape High Court before Nel J. The learned judge heard evidence from the side of the plaintiff only. The defendant had raised a special plea of prescription and denied the merits of the claim. However he at first elected not to participate in the trial citing ill-health and lack of funds. The evidence was consequently untested by cross-examination. [3] With the leave of the learned judge the defendant appeared through counsel for the limited purpose of arguing the special plea. The judge believed the plaintiff and her witnesses and accepted the expert psychological evidence of Ms Fredman on her behalf. He nevertheless upheld the special plea and dismissed the action. He decided that the wrongs first came to the knowledge of the plaintiff within the meaning of s 5(1)(c) of the Prescription Act 18 of 1943 on ‘the dates upon which the assaults were committed and not the dates upon which their effects were realised’. [4] The assaults were committed between November 1958 and 1967. The plaintiff attained her majority in 1973. She instituted action in August 1999. The learned judge held that the plaintiff’s evidence that she first realised in 1997 that it was not she but rather the defendant who bore responsibility for the physical, psychological and emotional damage which she had suffered since 1958 was accordingly of no assistance to her. Nor, so the learned judge found, was the plaintiff ‘a disabled person’; she was therefore unable to rely on s 7(1)(b) of the 1943 Act which provides