There is a special place on earth for child sex ring kingpin Gerhard Ackerman and all others like him — the deepest, darkest pit from which there is no escape or reprieve.
Ackerman, who had faced 740 charges related to a child sex ring that included rape, attempted murder, distribution of child porn, and human trafficking of minor children for sexual exploitation, was found guilty of several charges relating to the rape and sex trafficking of teenage boys in the Johannesburg high court on Monday.
He ran a massage business where clients would pay for massages and sexual experiences with the boys who performed the massages.
Ackerman’s co-accused, human rights advocate and acting judge Paul Kennedy, was found dead in his home in February 2022, reportedly from suicide while on bail before the start of the trial.
The attempted murder charge relates to Ackerman “selling” the sexual services of a youth to disgraced Kennedy, who he knew was HIV-positive.
Handing down judgment, judge Ismail Mahomed, who described the trial as a “dark episode”, found Ackerman was a blatant liar who contradicted himself throughout the trial.
He detailed how Ackerman had targeted the boys, some as young as 14, exploiting them.
“It is self evident that the clients tell him what they want to do with boys and he promises that he will send them boys,” Mahomed said.
Speaking in a TV news interview after judgment, a mother of one of the boys said Ackerman had lured her son via Facebook.
The sobbing woman said the abuse had torn their family apart.
Justice, she said, would be “if he never, ever, saw the sun rising again”.
“Maybe they put him in a place where it’s dark, where he can feel how dark our lives are, how dark my son’s life is. In a place with no windows.
“He can live his life there. But still, that won’t be enough.”
No sentence will ever bring complete healing to Ackerman’s victims.
But the message this judgment sends is an important one and it is two-fold: that justice prevails and, perhaps more important, that victims have a voice and their voice will be heard.
We trust the sentence will send as strong a message: that paedophiles have no place in society.
HeraldLIVE