For years he wanted nothing to do with his stepson, calling the teenage boy “rubbish” and “the prince of darkness”, and contacted the police on several occasions with requests to have him locked up.
However, when it came to light that his stepson had allegedly raped his daughter repeatedly, a Paradise Beach father opted not to involve the police.
State advocate Ismat Cerfontein put it to the accused in the Gqeberha high court on Tuesday that he wanted to keep his stepson out of prison so that he could keep using him.
The state alleges that his stepson was providing him with pornographic material which he then sold online.
This was corroborated by evidence read out in court, of text messages extracted from the accused’s phone.
The evidence showed an alleged exchange of messages and pornographic material between the accused and his stepson in July 2022, long after he claimed to have cut ties with the young man.
The accused denied the allegations against him and told the court that the messages were not true, and that the corresponding versions of the complainants and witnesses who had testified before court were fabrications and lies.
The accused, who cannot be named, faces several charges related to the grooming and sexual abuse of his oldest daughter and stepson between 2015 and 2022 as well as bestiality and more than 700 counts related to the production and distribution of child pornography.
He has pleaded not guilty despite his life partner and her son — referred to as his stepson — testifying against him.
The accused allegedly instructed his stepson and biological daughter to engage in sexual acts while he filmed them or instructed his stepson to take pictures and videos while he engaged in sexual acts with his sister and other girls.
His stepson, now 22, has since pleaded guilty to the rape of his sister and was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, while his partner and the mother of his children received a three-year suspended sentence for not reporting her children’s sexual abuse and defeating the ends of justice.
Under cross-examination by Cerfontein, the accused stammered and seemed unable to account for the messages read out in court.
And despite evidence that the police’s forensic experts extracted the texts and pictures directly from his mobile phone after confiscating it from him, he denied that he ever sent them.
The pictures in question depict his stepson and daughter engaged in lewd acts.
During his testimony, the accused seemed evasive, and the prosecution had to remind him on several occasions to give simpler responses to the questions put to him.
At one stage, the court had to adjourn briefly as the accused complained that he was feeling unwell and faint.
Flanked by two court orderlies, he was visibly shaking when he was led down the stairs to the court’s holding cells.
Earlier, he told the court that his relationship with his stepson was that of a loving father and son from the age of about eight when the boy came to live with them in Paradise Beach, Jeffreys Bay.
Before that, the youngster had been living with his maternal grandparents in Humansdorp.
The situation deteriorated at about the time the boy went to high school after a short stint of living with his biological father in Sedgefield.
The accused told the court they complied with the boy’s request to stay with his father and sent him on a bus with clothes, his cellphone and his PlayStation gaming console.
However, two months later that family notified them that the boy was impossible to live with and he needed to return to Paradise Beach.
From that point, he and his partner no longer had any control over his stepson.
He claimed the teenager fell in with the wrong crowd, developed a drug habit and had violent outbursts at home to the point where he would assault his mother and the accused, and everyone in the house lived in fear.
He told the court that the police were called to their house “almost every weekend”, when the boy was still a teenager, but that “the system failed him” because the responding officers would not arrest a minor.
In the weeks leading up to January 2022, when his daughter confided in family members about her brother raping her, he said he noted a change in the relationship between the two siblings.
When he asked her about it, his daughter told him that her brother said they would be locked up if she spoke about what happened.
The accused said he suspected that his stepson had molested his daughter, but despite claiming to have a close relationship with her, he did not pursue the issue further apart from bringing it to his partner’s attention.
Cerfontein said that despite his suspicions, the accused did nothing to prevent the two siblings from spending time together.
He put it to the accused that he did not want his stepson to be arrested because he was using him, to which the accused replied: “I don’t touch rubbish.”
He claimed that after the rape allegations came to light his stepson was kicked out of the house and he did not have any further contact with him.
The trial continues.
The Herald
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