Durban - A 77-year-old man, who was turned in by his wife after she allegedly found images of child pornography on his laptop at their Pietermaritzburg old age home, appeared in court on Thursday.
The grey-haired pensioner, who has been charged with possession of child pornography, was granted bail of R1 000 by the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court.
The matter was adjourned to April 1. He cannot be named, as he has not yet pleaded to the charge.
The man was arrested on February 5, at an old age home in an upmarket suburb where he lives with his wife, who reported to police the images she had allegedly seen.
The Cyber Crime Unit then tracked 340 images of child pornography on the hard drive of his laptop computer.
The couple are in the process of divorcing.
It is alleged the man kept the images of the children on his laptop from 2007 until April last year, had visited websites that contained child pornography, and had downloaded images from the sites.
In a statement to the court, the man’s wife explained that she had discovered her husband’s obsession in 2007.
On one occasion, she caught him in the act of watching porn featuring young girls.
Disgusted with what she saw, she confronted him and was assured that he would stop surfing the sites, she said.
However, she allegedly found him viewing pornographic images on his laptop on numerous subsequent occasions.
According to the statement, at some stage, he had given his wife an old desktop computer that contained folders named with lewd terms referring to child porn. These contained pornographic images, which the wife deleted.
On another occasion, she was using the laptop for banking purposes when, as she typed the web page address into the browser, a list of porn sites he had allegedly visited appeared.
The wife said she had also found a flash drive and disc belonging to him in a box in their study which also contained pornographic images of children.
At that point she asked for help from her son-in-law.
In terms of his bail conditions, the accused cannot contact his wife or son-in-law.
Daily News