Kimberley - Kimberley photographer, Rudolph Coetzee, on Monday pleaded guilty in the Northern Cape High Court to 45 charges, including rape, sexual assault and the manufacturing of child pornography involving local children as young as three years old.
The 23-year-old photographer has been in custody since his arrest on May 22 2014 and now faces possible life imprisonment, after police confiscated various images, taken by Coetzee, depicting children between the ages of three and 12 years while naked and engaging in sexual acts with them.
The images were confiscated from Coetzee’s personal computer during the raid on his home, which doubled as his photographic studio.
Coetzee on Monday pleaded guilty to all 45 charges against him, including 23 charges of manufacturing of child pornography, four of rape, one of attempted rape and 17 sexual assault charges. He repeatedly uttered “guilty” after the prosecutor, Jaques Rosenburg, explained each separate charge in detail.
Coetzee admitted to pushing his penis between the buttocks of a three-year-old boy and also spreading his buttocks apart to expose the child’s anus (sexual assault), attempting to have a 10-year-old boy penetrate him anally (attempted rape), touching the buttocks and penis of a six-year-old and 12-year-old boy (sexual assault), anally penetrating a six-year-old boy with his finger (rape), penetrating a six-year-old girl’s vagina with his finger (rape), penetrating a three-year-old boy’s mouth with his penis (rape) and pushing his penis against the naked vagina of a six-year-old girl (sexual assault).
He also admitted to taking photographs of all of the acts as they were being committed. These photographs, as well as a further 23 depicting children in naked positions (manufacturing of child pornography), form the basis of the case against Coetzee.
During the plea explanation, Coetzee’s legal representative, advocate Van Zyl Nel, told the court that his client had a “trust relationship” with all the young victims, after being introduced to them through friends of his mother, who he lived with.
The plea explanation further indicated that Coetzee knew his victims well and that they trusted him, with most looking up to him “as their older brother”. It stated that Coetzee was 17 years old when he first made acquaintance with the children and that they would “hang out and play in his home studio” while their mothers and grandmothers visited Coetzee’s mother.
Coetzee indicated that he first became interested in pornography in 2009, and that this exposure led to experimenting with the manufacturing of child pornography. He said that his victims were influenced to take part in the sessions as a result of their close relationship with him.
He added that it was never his intention to distribute the images, although he knew he could benefit financially by doing so.
Coetzee left school in Grade 10 to pursue a career in photography.
As the gruesome details of the charges were read out in court, it transpired that Coetzee had willingly and knowingly committed sexual acts with the young victims.
Coetzee also admitted that he had deliberately and knowingly committed the acts, while being fully aware of the unlawful nature of his actions. He added that he knew that due to the age of the children, they would not be able to give consent to any of the acts.
As Coetzee pleaded guilty, the children are not expected to testify, but a psychologist’s “victim impact report” is expected to be handed in during Coetzee’s next court appearance, on June 22, when pre-sentencing procedures are expected to commence.
Coetzee’s mother was on Monday in court sitting next to him and often leaning over to offer him words of support.
“I don’t condone what my son has done but a mother stays a mother regardless, and I will keep supporting him,” she told the DFA
The crimes took place from 2010 to 2011 at his then home-studio in Beaconsfield and in the house where he was arrested in Hillcrest, Kimberley, from 2012 to 2014.
Diamond Fields Advertiser