Western Cape man sentenced to 195 years for horrific child exploitation crimes

A man will effectively serve 35 years' direct imprisonment following his conviction in the Paarl Regional Court on a raft of charges, including rape and child pornography. 

The 27-year-old man must serve two-thirds of his sentence before he can be considered for parole.

This comes after he 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 pornography, 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. 

NPA spokesperson 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 married 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 he 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 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 court has ordered the man's 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. 

Cape Times