By Kashiefa Ajam, Sheree Russouw and Thembisile Makgalemele
It's no wonder sex tourists - and especially paedophiles - are flocking to South Africa.
Self-confessed Swiss paedophile Peter Zimmermann is a free man because officials claimed they could not find his teenage boy victim - but The Star managed to find the boy, and four new child victims, in less than a day.
Zimmermann, 46, paid a fine of R10 000 and left the country after the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) made a "plea bargain" deal with him. The NPA said the complainant - the boy The Star found so easily - could not be traced by the police.
When The Star located Zimmermann's five victims from Alexandra township in Johannesburg - four are under the age of 16 and one is 19 - they told a harrowing tale of sexual abuse at the hands of a man they call "Master Peter".
The children, who beg on street corners, said on several occasions from October last year Zimmermann, after buying them expensive clothes and giving them money, had taken them to his room at the Balalaika Hotel in Sandton for sex.
The police, however, seem unaware that Zimmermann has been molesting young boys in South Africa for more than a year. They said Zimmermann had come to South Africa only this October "on vacation".
The police argued that they had investigated the possibility that Zimmermann had sexually assaulted more than one boy, but this had "proved to be untrue", said police spokesman Mary Martins-Engelbrecht.
However, all five of the boys said this week that the police had not talked to them since the incident two months ago.
It emerged this week that police investigators failed to take the 14-year-old boy to a doctor to be examined after he was found naked with Zimmermann at the Balalaika.
Instead, they made an appointment for him to see a clinical psychologist, but he failed to arrive.
Investigators also appear to have made little or no effort to track him down afterwards.
In a statement this week, the NPA said one of the mitigating circumstances in the case was that Zimmermann had been "traumatised" and had "shown remorse".
Other circumstances "justifying" his sentence were that he was a corporate lawyer; that he had been in a stable relationship for the past decade; and that he had to care for his elderly parents.
Little consideration, it seems, was given to his traumatised victims.
When The Star asked NPA spokesman Makhosini Nkosi a series of pressing questions about the case this week, it became clear that NPA prosecutor Peter Erasmus, who struck the deal with Zimmermann, had not conducted a thorough investigation.
Nkosi said that investigators had failed to take the boy to a doctor for a medical examination, which would have proved whether he had been sodomised or masturbated. In the plea and sentencing agreement, Zimmermann confessed only to masturbating the boy.
- Child welfare organisations around the country say the Zimmermann case is the tip of a very ugly iceberg of sex tourism and paedophilia.
Prostitution among young street children is particularly rife in Durban, Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town.
A lawyer specialising in children's rights, who did not want to be named, said Zimmermann might be "small fry in a bigger child trafficking and drugs ring".
"I can imagine this man (Zimmermann) thought he was getting off nice and easy. That is why we urgently need an international register of paedophiles so people like him can be named and shamed," she said.
Luke Lamprecht, corporate manager at the Teddy Bear Clinic, said: "This case has sent out a message that South Africa's street children are fair game.
"We are now saying to tourists that if they come here, they must bring an extra R10 000 if they get an urge to sexually assault a boy."
Niresh Ramklass, chief executive of Cape Town Child Welfare, said they had been told by Interpol about well organised paedophile groups targeting South Africa "because we don't have strict laws".