Western Cape man sentenced for rape, child trafficking, and over 600 child porn charges

A Western Cape man has been sentenced in the Paarl Regional Court following his conviction on a raft of charges, including rape and child pornography. 

The 27-year-old man was found guilty on two counts of trafficking in persons for online exploitation, four counts of rape of two minor children, three counts of using children for or benefiting from child phonography, 629 counts of possession of child pornography, three counts of unlawful and intentional distribution of child pornography, and three counts of child abuse. 

The court sentenced the accused to a total of 195 years but ordered most of the sentences to run concurrently.

The rapist cannot be named to protect the identity of his children who were violated during the commission of these crimes. 

The affected children include two girls aged six, another girl aged four, and a one-year-old boy. 

Western Cape spokesperson for the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), Eric Ntabazalila, said the matter did not go to trial. 

“The State and the accused, to facilitate the children from secondary victimisation, finalised the matter by way of a plea and sentencing agreement,” Ntabazalila said. 

The court heard that the man got married to the mother of his children on March 4, 2018; he was unemployed and stayed home with the minor children. 

The court heard that he subscribed to a social media application with instant messaging, where one can transmit and receive messages, photos, and videos. Users can communicate privately with other users or in groups. The social media platform users can send photographs taken within the application, which indicates to other users that a picture was taken in real time and not imported from a camera roll.

The stay-at-home dad created child pornography for financial gain. At the time, the conversion rate was $18 to the rand. 

Evidence before the court showed that the man connected with the group after the administrative user approved his access to the group, and he started to communicate with the administrative user. He admitted that he started making child pornographic content of his biological children that he intended to share with random people online in exchange for a monetary reward. He claims that he created an unknown amount of child pornography material depicting his three biological children.

He confessed that in the chats with the administrative user, he shared child pornographic images and videos of his biological minor children and sold an unknown amount of child pornography to unknown users for $5 to $10. 

He was arrested after an online undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Task Force Officer assigned to the Washington Field Office (WFO) as part of the FBI Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, operating from a satellite office in Washington, DC, acted as the administrative user of the group on social media application forwarded information about his activities to the South African Police Service (SAPS) for further investigation on December 22, 2022. He was arrested on May 30, 2023, and police confiscated his cellphone, which he used to commit the crimes against his children.

Senior State Advocate Evadne Kortje, who finalised the plea and sentencing agreement, said the accused contributed to the sexualisation of children, whose innocence should have been protected and preserved at all costs. 

“He communicated and joined the social media application to connect with individuals interested in child pornography. He downloaded child pornography from other unknown collectors and other hands-on child sexual abuse offenders. He abused his parental privilege and the trust relationship that he had towards his three small children,” Kortje submitted. 

The accused will effectively serve 35 years' direct imprisonment and must serve two-thirds of his sentence before he can be considered for parole. 

The court ordered his name be entered into the National Register for Sexual Offenders, the National Child Protection Register, declared him unfit to work with children, and unfit to possess a firearm.

Western Cape Director of Public Prosecutions, Advocate Nicolette Bell, welcomed the sentence. 

She said these types of crimes indicate that we need to make every day a child protection day to ensure that the most vulnerable within our society are protected. 

Bell stated that the fight against the scourge of sexual violence, especially against children and digital trafficking in children, needs to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. 

“It is for this reason that the NPA has dedicated prosecutors who deal with these types of crimes,” Bell said. 

She commended the current collaborative working relationship between international law enforcement agencies and SAPS, FCS- Serial and Electronic Crimes Investigation Unit (SECI).

robin.francke@iol.co.za

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