SA mother sells porn pics of daughter to man in US
FROM the age of 11, the girl was allegedly forced to pose and perform sexual acts so her mother could take photographs and send them to the man in the US.
Three years later, the teenager and her 11-year-old brother are in a place of safety after a dramatic international manhunt that started in North Carolina in the US, and ended in the small town of Vredenburg in the Western Cape.
When the SAPS’s Family Violence and Child Protection Unit raided the premises last week, they were shocked by what they found.
It was the first time, they said, that they had arrested a mother allegedly involved in the sexual assault of her child.
This week the girl’s parents, who can’t be named because of the sexual nature of the crime, will be back in court as they apply for bail.
They each face 10 charges relating to rape, sexual assault and the manufacture of child porn.
The search started when Lieutenant-Colonel Heila Niemand, the commander of the Gauteng Family Violence and Child Protection Unit, was approached by members of the Homeland Security Department based at the US embassy in Pretoria.
They informed her that a man had been arrested in Catawba County with child pornography on his cellphone. When the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation forensically investigated the phone, they discovered he had paid for the pictures. They tracked the payments to South Africa.
“He was using wire transfers to send the money,” said Niemand.
The suspect, she said, allegedly used Facebook and Whatsapp to communicate with the girl’s family.
Hunt
US authorities, she said, tracked the transfers to an address in Port Elizabeth, but police discovered the family had left. The hunt moved to Gauteng but again police found that the family no longer lived there.
Then they got lucky. “We were not sure we were going to find anything,” she recalled.
On February 14, the police found the family.
Niemand was able to piece together how the alleged crime unfolded. “He first befriended the child, sending her messages. Then the mother jumped onto the bandwagon, wanting payment. He would send messages asking for specific positions he wanted the girl to be photographed in.”
Police allege the mother had been sending photos of her daughter for three years. “They told us they did it because they are unemployed and needed to buy food.”
The girl, Niemand said, had believed the man in the US was going to marry her. The mother had no previous criminal record related to child pornography.
The Vredenburg arrests are just the latest in a number of high-profile child sex crimes that have rocked South Africa.
On Tuesday, the metro police and SAPS raided a brothel in Kempton Park in Ekurhuleni. They found teenagers as young as 15, believed to be sex workers. The teens were allegedly lured there with promises of employment and opportunities to study further.
Next month, 33-year-old Jayde Sheldon Bailey is to be sentenced in the Port Elizabeth Magistrates’ Court after it was discovered he was part of an international child porn ring called the gigatribe that shared images among each other.
Bailey, the father of 15-monthold twin daughters, and his wife are alleged to have distributed footage of rape, torture, and the murder of babies, including newborns.
They are charged with importing, possession and distribution of films that encourage or or promote child pornography or the sexual exploitation of children.