Police arrested a 47-year-old woman and a 48-year-old man in Bloubergstrand, Western Cape, on Tuesday, 10 June 2025, for the alleged sexual abuse of their two daughters, aged three and eight. (Photo: SAPS) 
The parents are also accused of sexual exploitation for allegedly unlawfully and intentionally pimping their minor daughters for financial or other reward to a third person.
These are among the shocking 25 counts against the parents and form part of the State’s evidence at their bail application in the Cape Town Magistrates’ Court to be heard on Thursday, 3 July 2025
The bail hearing date was set down on Wednesday, 2 July after Magistrate Alida Theart dismissed an application by lawyer William Booth, who represents the parents, for full disclosure of the State’s summary of the case and how his clients are linked to the charges.
During their appearance last week, the defence requested full access to the State’s evidence, while the prosecution sought to restrict it to protect the children while they investigated.
Read more: Prosecutors fight to withhold images of children allegedly abused by Bloubergstrand couple
The charges against the parents include creating and/or producing child pornography, rape, sexual exploitation of children, sexual assault, promoting sexual grooming of a child to perform a sexual act, using children for, or benefiting from child pornography, compelling a child to witness masturbation, and child abuse, neglect and abandonment.
These offences were committed between 2020 and April 2025. The pair were arrested on 10 June 2025 following a joint investigation involving the South African Police Services, the Department of Social Development, the FBI and US Homeland Security.
The investigation by the South African authorities, the FBI and US Homeland Security continues, according to prosecutor Claire Smidt.
Booth notified the court that his clients’ bail proceedings would be conducted in the form of affidavits. Smidt confirmed receipt of the accused’s affidavits and informed the court that the State had received a social worker’s report on the two children, who are in the care of a paternal aunt.
Just before proceedings ended on Wednesday afternoon, the investigating officer required the facial recognition of the accused to open a computer file that allegedly contained explicit sexual images or videos.
Smidt also stated that the prosecution would apply to have specific sections or all bail procedures heard in camera.
Gravity of charges
The charges against the accused are not for the faint-hearted. They indicate the gravity of the crimes and why the State has classified them as Schedule 6 in terms of the Criminal Procedure Act. A Schedule 6 offence means the accused must prove “exceptional circumstances” exist that warrant their release on bail.
Some of the charges include:
- Rape, in that during the period February 2020 until April 2023 the accused did unlawfully and intentionally commit an act of sexual penetration with their eight-year-old child. The same crime was also allegedly committed between April 2023 and December 2023;
- Creating or producing child pornography between February 2020 and December 2023. The accused allegedly made videos of a pornographic nature of the eight-year-old child and took nude pictures of her. The same crime was also allegedly committed by the accused against their three-year-old daughter between November 2021 and April 2025;
- Promoting sexual grooming of a child to perform a sexual act. The State alleges that between February 2020 to December 2023, the accused allegedly committed acts with the intention to encourage, persuade, diminish or reduce any resistance on the part of their eight-year-old daughter by walking naked in her presence while performing various sexual acts. The same crime was also committed in front of their three-year-old daughter between November 2021 and April 2025; and
- Sexual exploitation of children in that during February 2020 until April 2025, the accused allegedly engaged the services of their eight-year-old daughter with or without her consent for financial or other reward or compensation. The same crime was allegedly committed with their three-year-old daughter between November 2021 until April 2025.
Why do parents hurt their children?
These terrible charges levelled against the Bloubergstrand parents and allegedly perpetrated against their two minor daughters raise the question of why parents hurt or abuse their children.
According to South African child activist Robyn Wolfson Vorster, founder of For the Voiceless, a nonprofit company that amplifies the voices of children affected by these shocking crimes, a factor exacerbating the scourge is “crisis pregnancies”.
Ideally, she said, all children conceived would be wanted, but many children are conceived through violence or to families who cannot care for them.
Those parents should be able to say, “I do not want, or don’t have the ability to raise this child, let me put this child in a child protection system and somebody who is caring and competent can take the responsibility for raising them permanently through adoption or temporarily through foster care.”
A functioning child protection system that prioritises children’s best interests would allow for that, but South Africa’s is broken, she said.
“Troublingly, if you don’t attach to your baby and resent raising that child, it is easier to dehumanise them and scapegoat them for your problems, seeing them as the reason why your life is not what you had planned.
“Some parents can overcome this, but others don’t, and it is a contributing factor in cases that range from child abuse to deliberate neglect, to the stories that are even more horrific, children who are murdered, sold for body parts, into child labour or for sex trafficking,” Vorster said.
Dr Marcel Londt, former head of the Department of Social Work at the University of the Western Cape, told Daily Maverick that “access to pornography of any kind in our current world is free, fast and easy to access. The horror for many of these children does not stop when the devices are switched off – the fear of exposure, the fear of being attacked, the fear of disclosure as if it is their fault, follows them through every stage of their lives.”
Londt said children were our most valuable assets; therefore, we needed to ensure that their protection remained a priority.
“We live in a tech-driven world, which means that the safety, innocence and protection of our children is simply one click away. We have become wary of ‘Who is behind the keyboard?’
“We try to educate parents, teachers and children about the dangers embodied in the various emerging technologies. Sadly, the answer to ‘who is behind the keyboard, who is behind the device?’ is in the growing numbers of parents and caregivers who are the producers, the disseminators of these heinous crimes,” she told Daily Maverick. DM