Cape Town - Relatives of child porn accused Clinton Calder could be heard sobbing in court on Thursday as he came up from the holding cells.
Calder, 47, a broker from Fish Hoek, is suspected of being part of an international child pornography ring.
He faces charges related to the possession, manufacture and distribution of child porn.
Calder walked up into the dock, wearing a black hooded tracksuit top as his wife and daughter cried in court.
Asked if she had any comment, Calder’s wife said: “I am not interested in talking.”
Calder made his second appearance in the Simon’s Town Magistrate’s Court on Thursday and was granted R5 000 bail.
He looked straight ahead at magistrate Crystal Mckenna as she made her ruling on an application by the Cape Times to photograph the accused in court.
Defence attorney Anthony Berinato argued that Calder’s reputation was at stake as the charges were merely allegations. Mckenna ruled in the Cape Times’s favour, saying: “This is an open court. If the public wanted to see him, they could just come to court. I see no reason why the accused should not be photographed.”
Investigating officer Sergeant Delene Grobler detailed on the charge sheet how she had received a request from Chief Inspector Tim van Eester, from Antwerp in Belgium, to investigate Calder. Van Eester is involved in a probe into child porn, Operation Cloud 9.
Grobler said Van Eester suspected Calder of the possession, manufacture and distribution of child pornography. Calder is now among nine people arrested in South Africa this year on the same charges.
“The suspects’ main interest is the rape and sexual abuse of babies. They share similar sexual abuse images of babies online via a peer-to-peer file-sharing site,” Grobler said.
Van Eester sent Grobler a list of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that Calder had allegedly used to connect to a file-sharing website.
“I established which company the IP addresses belong to and the company was served with a subpoena,” Grobler said, adding it then became clear that Calder had been using the IP addresses on the dates and times provided by Van Eester.
The case has been postponed to November 4.
A 22-year-old man from KwaZulu-Natal faces similar charges after being arrested at his home in Pennington on Tuesday.
Two other men and a woman were arrested in Hercules, Pretoria, last week.
One of the men was released due to lack of evidence after the trio appeared in court last Friday.
Four other arrests had been made earlier this year in Plettenberg Bay, Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth, where police found material showing newborn babies being abused, raped and murdered.
@carlo_petersen
Cape Times