Cape Town -
A 74-year-old man has admitted he was wrong when he groomed young girls, paid them for naked photographs and sexually assaulted them.
This was the submission made by Johann Grobbelaar, the lawyer for 74-year-old Johannes Adolph Kleinhans, during closing arguments in the Parow Regional Court on Tuesday.
Grobbelaar argued that his client had admitted his guilt during an earlier guilty plea but that it was overturned when magistrate Amanda von Leeve found he did not admit all the elements of guilt. A fully fledged trial began and on Tuesday closing arguments were heard.
Grobbelaar said his client admitted that he had inappropriately touched a 13-year-old girl between 2009 and 2010 and that he gave her and two other victims gifts and payment in exchange for pornographic images of them.
“It’s not right, he knew it…Your Worship, you saw the photographs, it was explicit. He took it and paid the complainants to take them.
“The accused said: ‘I’ve done a lot of wrong and for that I must be convicted but please don’t find me guilty of something I didn’t do’,” Grobbelaar said in his address.
He was referring to one of the charges where the victim said she had not been penetrated with a sex toy. Grobbelaar added that the girl was the best person to say what had happened to her and what she said should be accepted by the court.
Kleinhans has been charged with 95 counts including sexual assault, indecent assault, sexual grooming, compelled self-sexual assault and using children to benefit from child pornography. Kleinhans was initially out on R50 000 bail, but was back in custody on May 8 this year after he pleaded guilty to the charges.
The indecent and sexual assault charges relate to allegations that Kleinhans inappropriately touched three girls, aged between 13 and 15, between 2009 and 2010. He had also forced one of the girls to use sex toys. There were 89 pornographic images made.
State prosecutor Herculine Swart argued that the State had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt and the girls, who did not know one another, did not have a reason to concoct a story.
She said he had planned the crimes as he hired the Parow house where they occurred and had wine, sex toys, condoms and TVs set up.
Judgment is expected on November 13.
Cape Argus