The case against the 53-year-old Grahamstown man facing charges of possession, manufacturing and distributing child pornography has been postponed to today, Wednesday 29 April, for further investigation.
The case against the 53-year-old Grahamstown man facing charges of possession, manufacturing and distributing child pornography has been postponed to today, Wednesday 29 April, for further investigation.
The man, who may not be named until he has stated his plea, appeared briefly in the Magistrate's Court in Grahamstown on Tuesday 28 April. He was not asked to plead.
The owner of a local guest house, he was arrested in Grahamstown on Wednesday 11 March in a joint raid by local police and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Women and Men against Child Abuse (WMACA) protested with placards outside the court yesterday. The organisation has called for maximum sentencing of perpetrators of child pornography, in order to send a strong message.
Speaking to Grocott's Mail outside the court, the organisation's advocacy manager Germaine Vogel said she believed maximum sentencing of convicted child sexual predators would serve as a stern warning.
The accused allegedly pretended to be a teenage girl, conning hundreds of child victims into performing sexual acts, which were streamed over the internet.
In a telephonic interview with Grocott's Mail shortly after the man's arrest, Commander of the of the Family Violence and Child Protection Unit's Gauteng office, Lieutenant Colonel Heila Niemand, confirmed plans to extradite the accused.
“On Wednesday the Provincial Head Office and Family, Child and Sexual Offences Unit Investigation team, together with members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, raided the premises of the suspect and arrested him around 10am,” said Niemand.
Niemand said that in February 2015 the Provincial Head Office received information through the FBI and Interpol that a group of individuals was operating websites designed to trick children between the ages of 8 and 13 into engaging in sexually explicit activities on web cameras.
According to Niemand, the accused pretended to be a teenage girl, and persuaded his victims to perform sexual acts which he recorded and streamed over the internet.
“Once he found a victim, he would gain their trust, allegedly getting them to perform sexual acts which he recorded,” she said. Unknowingly the children were then engaged in sexually explicit activity, Niemand said.
She said once he had the videos, he would use them to lure other girls into doing the same thing.
Niemand confirmed that the FBI wants the suspect extradited to the US, as they believe he is the administrator of a website linked to paedophiles in the US, Canada and Europe.
Niemand said the FBI has recovered a copy of the servers hosting the websites, including logs of the IP addresses of the members who have accessed the websites.
“The FBI want him extradited, as most of the 600 girls whom he is alleged to have abused… are from there,” Niemand said.
According to Niemand, seven suspects were arrested in the US. They were users of certain websites.
Niemand said the following exhibits were seized at the man's Grahamstown premises: 16 hard drives, one laptop, two video cameras and two cameras.
