Lawyers for Cape Town’s infamous “Porn Pastor” are trying to get the convicted paedophile’s laptop back from the police so that it can be used by him as a studying aid during his 15-year sentence at Drakenstein prison.
Kent Locke, 29, pleaded guilty to 47 child sex abuse charges in the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court during October last year.
According to Weekend Argus, the charges were listed in a 43-page plea bargain which he eventually signed after almost a year of playing legal poker with sexual offences prosecutors. He was subsequently sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, with five years suspended, for offences against seven of his boy victims, aged 12-17.
The child protection police enforcers, however, are reluctant to release Locke’s laptop from their evidence locker without proper guidance from the National Prosecuting Authority.
To complicate matters further, while Locke was eventually convicted, the question still remains over what happened to the images that led to his conviction.
While he assured investigators during proceedings that he deleted all the naked images he had solicited from his schoolboy congregants while masquerading as a teenage girl in a WhatsApp sex scam (up to 60 victims, according to the Child Protection Unit), the police could ultimately find no concrete proof of that.
Approached by Argus, Jarrod Seethal, the Wynberg sexual offences prosecutor advocate who put Locke behind bars, responded that he was aware of the defence’s appeal.
“Mr Morgan did inform me that his client would like his laptop back from SAPS due the finalisation of the matter. However, I will need to inquire from the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) if it is indeed true that he is allowed access to a laptop and the internet, in light of his conviction,” he continued.
“I will reserve my opinion on the matter until I have the facts before me and have had an opportunity to liaise with the DCS,” Seethal said.
Locke’s lawyer Ed Morgan declined to comment on his client’s request.
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