SAfrican held for holding family captive for years
Print Edition
A SOUTH African man accused of abusing his five children while allegedly keeping them captive for more than a decade appeared briefly in a court east of Johannesburg yesterday.
The 36-year-old allegedly tortured his children, aged between two and 16, with electric cables and burnt them with a blowtorch, police investigator Rudi Jansen said.
The man’s wife also told police that her husband regularly stripped her naked, then handcuffed and assaulted her.
Police said a doctor’s report showed the 16-year-old daughter was sexually active, but had never left the house. They are probing allegations that the man, described as a successful Afrikaans businessman, kept his family captive for as many as 16 years, Jansen said.
Afrikaans-language newspaper Beeld reported the children never left the house and had never been to school.
The court ordered that the man — heavy-set and with hair shaved short — should not be named so as to protect the children. Outside the court a small number of protesters said the man should be refused bail.
“He must go to jail! You pig!” one of the posters read.
“They must bring him to us. We’ll know what to do with him,” a protester said.
“You can’t believe that things like this happen today right under our noses,” said another.
People living on the man’s property in the mining town of Springs, east of Johannesburg, said they never knew he had five children. Neighbors called the police after the man’s 11-year-old son escaped last week.
The accused took his son back from the neighbors, held his head under water in his swimming pool, beat him and then hid the wounded boy in the ceiling when police arrived, said Jansen.
Police took four children from the house, but the accused said the 11-year old had run away. He then secretly took the boy to relatives in a neighboring province. After a few days the wife broke down and told authorities where the child was, and about years of abuse at her husband’s hands.
The house was filthy and was filled with chains, blowtorches, ropes and pornographic DVDs. There was expensive furniture, but all the children had to sleep in one bed, Beeld said.
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