A sports coach offered a teenage girl to a fellow athlete for sex, the alleged victim’s father told the Durban Regional Court.
|||A sport coach offered a teenage girl to a fellow athlete for sex, the alleged victim’s father told the Durban Regional Court on Monday.
This was one of the factors that had exposed the alleged sexual abuse of his daughter, the father of the 14-year-old said. The person to whom the offer was made had told him of it, he testified at the coach’s bail hearing.
The 41-year-old coach, presently training Olympic athletes in Europe, faces allegations of sexual assault, sexual grooming and sexual exploitation of a child, as well as possession of child pornography. He cannot be identified until he has pleaded.
The girl’s parents declined an offer of an Olympic scholarship for their daughter after her mother became suspicious of her former coach’s intentions, the father said on Monday.
He said his wife and daughter travelled to Europe last year after his daughter was offered a scholarship at an Olympic training centre about five hours’ drive from the coach’s residence.
The coach, a former Durban resident now living in Europe, had fetched the mother and daughter from the airport.
“My wife became suspicious of him. He wanted to take my daughter out to dinner. I SMSed him and said it was inappropriate for him to just take her out,” the girl’s father testified.
“When we opposed, he then invited my wife along. He constantly tried to get my daughter alone with him.”
The father told the court how the suspected paedophile continued to send messages to his daughter after he became aware that he (the father) knew about the alleged abuse and was in possession of all the communication between the coach and his daughter.
“While overseas my daughter received messages from the accused,” he said.
“After the accused knew that I knew the content of the e-mails and SMSes he continued to send them
. We told our daughter not to communicate with him in any way.”
The father said the man, who coached his daughter, continued to communicate with her until he began speaking with the coach’s wife about the coach returning to South Africa towards the end of April.
The father said his daughter received postings on BBM (Blackberry Messenger) with hate sentiments such as, “stupid, rich, b****” from other people within her sporting circles.
He said the coach would use other people, on BBM or other social media, to inform him of his daughter’s whereabouts.
The court heard that when the teen showed her father the electronic chats between herself and the coach, the father transposed them to e-mail using a cellphone application, and sent the e-mail to his address as well as his daughter’s.
”That same day my daughter received an SMS from the accused saying something to the effect of, ‘It’s now interesting since your father knows the contents of the SMS’. Later that evening my daughter received an SMS from the accused’s wife saying that she wanted to speak to her,” the father testified.
“The wife responded, saying she had seen the pictures and that they had been deleted off the phone and the computers and that she was very disappointed with the accused and my daughter,” he said.
The father said the SMS concluded, “This is why I divorced him”.
“I was suspicious about whether it was the accused’s wife sending the SMSes or the accused pretending to be his wife.”
The father said he managed to get the coach’s wife’s cellphone number and it was different to the one the SMSes were sent from.
“Assuming that the wife had sent the SMS, I proceeded to tell her that apart from the pictures there were other charges against her husband.” It was then, the father said, that the coach’s wife denied any knowledge of any pictures.
“I put it to her that her husband sexually abused my daughter and she defended him,” he said. “She demanded evidence of the alleged crimes which I said I could not provide as I was a State witness. I sent her a letter from the child abuse investigator stating the crimes against her husband.”
After persuading the coach to come to South Africa, the man was arrested at King Shaka International Airport on April 24.
During cross-examination by defence counsel, Gideon Scheltema, SC, the father said the plan formulated by himself and his attorney, John Lister, was not discussed with police.
“I had no intention of meeting the accused at the airport,” he said. “I got him here under false pretences because I believed he would never return to South Africa if he knew there was a warrant out for his arrest.”
The bail application continues.
rizwana.umar@inl.co.za
Daily News