Couple allegedly abused four street children in their flatlet for weeks, exposing their genitals, beating and raping them.
|||Durban - A Hillary couple charged with kidnapping four street children, as well as rape and exposing their genitals, were refused bail in the Durban regional court yesterday.
The woman, a freelance journalist, and her partner, both 32, sat alongside one another in the dock. Neither may be identified until they have pleaded to the nine charges against them.
Magistrate CM Mkhaliphi noted that the four children in question were aged between 12 and 15.
He rejected a submission by defence lawyer Mfanafuthi Biyela that the investigating officer who testified had not even been at the crime scene and that the court had relied on the work of a private investigator, Mark Hardwick, hired by I Care, a non-profit organisation that helps street children.
In her application for bail, the woman said she had fully co-operated with police, earned R5 000 a month and supported her sickly mother.
She tearfully hugged family members who had been in court, including her sari-clad mother, before returning to the cells.
At their last hearing, her partner had said he was just doing his bit for humanity when he took the street children home and provided them with food and shelter. In return they were to protect his property from criminals.
Three boys – two aged 15 and one 13 – positively identified the man, when he was arrested by the Bellair SAPS, as the person who had picked them up from the street and promised them employment.
Instead, they alleged they were locked in a granny flat and regularly assaulted.
The investigating officer, Sergeant Samantha Paul, said that in April last year four boys were picked up from the street and held captive for weeks in a granny flat until they escaped.
The 15 year old was approached by the man in the Point area, and said he was promised work and was paid R50 after he had completed chores at the accused’s home.
When he asked to go back to the city centre later that day, he alleged the man assaulted him and forced him into the granny flat and locked the doors.
The teen claimed he was forced by the man to touch his girlfriend on her private parts and when he did not comply, he was beaten. This occurred several times a day until the boy escaped about a month later, Paul said.
The second boy, also 15, was picked up by the man in June last year under the same circumstances and was allegedly forced to steal from shops while the man kept the shopkeeper occupied. The boy escaped in August when the accused forgot to lock the door to the flat.
It was unclear how the 13-year-old boy, who was picked up from the city centre in January, had escaped, she said.
The fourth boy, aged 12, was held captive in April and was still on the property when the accused were arrested.
Paul said that when one of the boys was recaptured after he had tried to escape, the man assaulted him and cut him with a knife on his leg. The boy said the man had told him if he tried to escape again he would cut off his leg, she said.
On Wednesday in the witness box, the man said he didn’t know why the complainants would accuse him of such acts.
The man, who buys and sells cars for a living from his home in Hillary, told the court that he had met the first complainant in 2011 at a set of traffic lights in Greyville.
Then one day, the boy asked him where he lived and a few days later the boy arrived at his home. The couple let the boy stay in the granny flat.
One day, after an errand to a nearby Spar, the boy never returned.
He took in the second complainant who approached him, saying he was a friend of the first complainant.
A few weeks later, a fire gutted the Wendy house on his property, destroying his car and partially burning the flat.
The incident was not reported to the police, he said.
A few months later a 13 year old he had never seen before arrived at his home asking about the fire and looking for a place to stay, he said. A few weeks later, he said the teen ran away after taking R600 in cash, watches and a cellphone.
The fourth boy, aged 12, who was at the accused’s home at the time of the arrest, had been picked up after he had begged the man for a place to stay.
He said when the police burst into his home last week they took the boy aside and “put things in his head”.
The case was postponed to June 27 for further investigation.
Independent on Saturday