'Child sex' sites e-mailed

2005-02-15 15:21

Pretoria - Pretoria advocate pair Cezanne Visser and Dirk Prinsloo, accused of an array of sex crimes, appear to have had e-mail correspondence with websites dealing in child sex and bestiality, the Pretoria High Court heard on Tuesday.

A folder marked "naughty mails" on their personal computer, seized during the couple's arrest, contained 177 sex and pornography related e-mail messages, former police computer expert Danny Myburgh testified.

Some of the e-mails, at least one addressed to a "Teen Beast", dealt with problems the couple were apparently experiencing in gaining access to certain sites.

'Poplap'

The password they used was "Poplap", Myburgh told the court.

He also testified that the computer had been used on more than one occasion to visit websites apparently containing child pornography.

Many of the sites' titles contained the words "Lolita", "latina" or "teen" - all three usually associated with child pornography sites.

Websites accessed from the couple's computer included "Lolita's Sex Portal", "Best Links To Real Free Photos", "Bestiality Live", "Banned Illegal Porn Site" and "Cannabise's Pamela Anderson-Lee Website".

Apparent child porn pics

The principal user registered on the computer was "Dirk".

Myburgh further testified about two apparent child pornography pictures found on the computer's hard drive.

They were saved in a folder called "My Pictures" under the name "Lol1" and "Lol2" - an apparent abbreviation for Lolita.

The pictures appeared to have been downloaded from the internet, he said.

Prinsloo's advocate, Piet Coetzee, suggested that the two pictures could have been planted.

He also pointed out that a person using the word "Lolita" in an internet search was not necessarily out to get child pornography.

Furthermore, Coetzee said, many websites "enticed" their visitors with promises of "teen" images, but gave a guarantee once accessed that all the images were of adult women.

Myburgh said police also seized a stiffy disk at the couple's home that contained 11 possible child pornography images.

He explained that a police investigator who examined the disk himself rather than hand it over to computer experts, as required, had not contaminated the evidence.

While the action was not recommended, Myburgh said he had managed to determine that the data on the disk had not been altered.

Child porn sites 'disappear'

Myburgh told the court that investigations involving internet child pornography were very difficult.

Police were seldom able to prove that websites visited by suspects did indeed contain child pornography as the sites usually disappeared after a while.

He could not therefore state that the sites accessed from the couple's computer did contain child pornography, "but in my experience it is possible they could have".

Prinsloo and Visser are standing trial on a variety of charges related to alleged sexual violations of women and girls.

- SAPA