Cape Town - A 74-year-old man charged with the unlawful possession of child pornography allegedly hid a memory card containing naked images of young girls in his sock, the Parow Regional Court has heard.
This was the evidence of Constable Alroe Luiters, who testified in the trial against Johannes Adolph Kleinhans on Tuesday.
Luiters, who is attached to the Hawks, testified that he attended a crime scene at Kleinhans’s rented home in Bellville on November 12, 2010.
Luiters was tasked with searching Kleinhans while other officers conducted a search-and-seizure process.
Luiters said he had asked Kleinhans whether he had anything untoward in his possession and he said no.
The men then went to the bathroom in the house where Luiters searched Kleinhans thoroughly.
“I asked him if I could search him. He agreed. I searched his entire body and found something funny in his sock. It was a memory card inside a plastic holder,” Luiters testified. Luiters said he had asked Kleinhans what the item was and why he hid it.
“He told me it’s a memory card and there are lots of pictures of naked young girls on it and that he knew it could get him into big trouble,” Luiters testified.
Kleinhans’s lawyer, Johannes Grobelaar, only put one query to Luiters and that was that photographs on the memory card were of one girl and not many girls. Luiters stuck to his earlier evidence.
Earlier this year, Kleinhans pleaded guilty to 95 counts including the manufacture and possession of child pornography and the indecent assault of three young girls over a prolonged period.
The girls had been 13 to 15 at the time and the offences were committed between 2009 and 2010.
Kleinhans was initially out on R50 000 bail, but was back in custody on May 8 this year after he pleaded guilty to 95 charges including sexual assault, indecent assault, sexual grooming, compelled self-sexual assault and using children to benefit from child pornography.
The indecent and sexual assault charges relate to allegations that Kleinhans inappropriately touched the girls. He had also forced one of the girls to use sex toys on herself.
The 89 pornographic images of the girls showed their naked bodies, exposed genitals and other body parts.
However, during mitigation of sentence, Kleinhans changed his guilty plea to one of not guilty.
Magistrate Amanda von Leeve said this amounted to him denying the charges.
On August 28, Von Leeve halted sentencing proceedings and reversed Kleinhans’s plea of guilty to not guilty on all 95 counts.
Cape Argus