School girls were targeted in a KwaZulu-Natal sex scandal.
Picture: File / The Citizen.
A tally of 60 women have now come forward with allegations against a KwaZulu-Natal Midlands man accused of sexual misconduct spanning several years, as the scale of the scandal continues to grow.
The number of alleged victims of the alleged Hilton predator has jumped from 44 to 60, with 16 more women coming forward since on Friday.
Their accounts add to an already concerning catalogue of allegations involving women and girls, some of whom say they were still children, one as young as 11, when they were first targeted.
Private investigator Brad Nathanson, who is collating the accounts, said the fresh rush of responses had brought more alleged victims out of the shadows.
“The full extent of the allegations and sheer number of women subjected to this predator‘s abuse is still emerging,” he said.
“It simply strengthens an already damning list of complaints that range from statutory rape through to assault.”
A scandal exposed
The Citizen has since learnt that concerns about the man and allegations surrounding his conduct appear to have been known in parts of the Midlands community for years.
It was an audit trail on a 15-year old girl’s phone that initially led Nathanson to the man.
“He made her believe that she was his special girl. He didn’t want anybody else to have her.”
There was also an alleged sexual relationship between the man and the teenager, Nathanson said.
More and more victims coming out
Residents have reached out since the first report, some seeking to confirm the identity of the man as well as that of his mother, who is involved in private school education in the area.
“We have known about him for a long time,” one said, “but nobody has done anything about it.”
The allegations paint a picture of conduct stretching from the man’s late teens into his early 30s. Women have alleged that, while they were still schoolgirls, he obtained their contact details and sent them unsolicited sexually explicit photographs and videos, initially through platforms including Mxit and BlackBerry Messenger and later through Instagram and WhatsApp.
Several accounts of alleged abuse focus on pupils from the same private school, with some women alleging they were targeted while in Grades 6, 7 or 8. According to some of the women, receiving an unsolicited “dick pic” from the man became so commonplace that it was regarded as something of a rite of passage among girls at the school.
Nathanson said the man allegedly groomed minors into sexual relationships lasting for months, while other accounts include unwanted sexual advances towards adult women.
The oldest woman to have come forward was 70 at the time of her alleged encounter.
There are also allegations that he approached children at gyms.
Psychologist and medical doctor Dr Jonathan Redelinghuys said individuals who repeatedly engage in this behaviour may become more confident over time, particularly where there have been no apparent consequences.
“An individual who has man aged to avoid consequences of their actions may also use this as evidence of the perceived harm lessness of their behaviour or may use this to strengthen their own fantasy of control or of being untouchable,” he said.
Nathanson said concerns about the man’s conduct had been raised with a teacher and school management as far back as 2017.
A criminal case subsequently stalled after the investigating officer died and the docket could not be located, but Nathanson is now working with police in an attempt to resuscitate the matter.
“We are redoing the statements and collecting all available evidence,” Nathanson said.
“That so many more women have come forward, with several intending to lay criminal complaints, is a positive turn.”
Redelinghuys said people engaged in serial online grooming behaviour may also develop cognitive distortions that allow them to rationalise what they are doing.
“They may even view their victims in a hypersexualised manner, possibly targeting multiple individuals at once to satisfy their internal fantasies,” he said.
SA has seen cases in which sexual offending against children continued across multiple victims.
In 2024, the High Court in Johannesburg sentenced Gerhard Ackerman to 12 life terms, to run concurrently, for multiple sexual crimes against children, predominantly young boys.
He was convicted on charges, including attempted murder and sexual offences involving minors.
There is no connection between Ackerman and the allegations involving the Midlands man.
National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson Natasha Ramkisson-Kara said the NPA had not yet received any dockets.
She said any charges would depend on the evidence contained in a docket. Several of the women who have now come forward also intend to lay criminal complaints.
