Child protection organisation Molo Songololo has welcomed the sentence imposed on a child groomer and convicted rapist after he committed crimes on children between 7 and 12 years old.
The 49-year-old father of three daughters, who claims to be a born again Christian and has been married for 14 years, targeted children who visited his daughter.
He was sentenced to 30 years’ direct imprisonment by the Vredenburg Regional Court.
Molo Songololo director Patric Solomons said the conviction and sentence were a step in the right direction. “We are pleased that the courts are taking offences against children seriously.
“Grooming is an offence that is serious in our communities and needs to be rooted out.
“Children are being groomed and we are pleased that the courts are starting to wake up and see this as the cruel crime that it is.
“We must also seek to educate communities, police and protective services, and our children about these offences.
“We need more to be done, children need to also be aware of what grooming means and these people are among us, they walk among us and they prey on unsuspecting children,” he said.
The court ordered the perpetrator, whose name is being withheld to protect his child, entered into the National Register for Sexual Offenders and that the guardian of the complainants be notified of his sentences.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Eric Ntabazalila said the man was arrested in his house in Vredenburg on April 28, 2022, after the grandmother of one of his victims reported his string of sexual offences to the police.
“He was charged with three counts of sexual assault, two counts of using children for child pornography, a count of creation of child pornography, a count of possession of child pornography, three counts of sexual grooming of children, three counts of child rape, and a count of exposure of pornography to children.
“The court sentenced him to a total of 135 years of direct imprisonment but ordered some of his sentences to run concurrently,” he said.
State prosecutor Chandre Minnaar told the court that the abuse spanned nine years, between 2013 and 2022.
She said the man violated the trust relationship as the father of the complainants’ friend, and cunningly plotted to ensure that he isolated the complainants to abuse them sexually.
“He sexualised them at such a young age by exposing them to pornography to reduce their resistance to the subsequent sexual offences and the rapes he committed.”
Minnaar further argued that the man exhibited a clear pattern of behaviour by carefully selecting young and vulnerable child victims.
“He defiled the sanctity of his family home with his illicit and wicked sexual offences against the child complainants when his wife was at work.
“The sexual offences he committed established numerous violations of the rights of the children to privacy, dignity and bodily integrity,” said Minnaar.
The provincial director of public prosecutions, advocate Nicolette Bell, welcomed the sentence and expressed shock at the crimes committed by the man against children.
Cape Times