by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Feb 16, 2026 | Child Abuse, Children’s Online World
Grok’s recent frenzied creation and sharing of deepfake pornography through X’s public platform confirmed what activists have known for years. The technology to digitally undress women and children and create e-rape content is easily accessible, largely free, gamified and difficult to police, and neither those responsible for ‘nudifying’ technology or those creating the images think it’s a big deal.
Warning: this article contains disturbing content about sexual violence and child sexual abuse material.
As 2025 ended, social media platform X was suddenly flooded with nonconsensual images of people stripped down to bikinis. It began as a “put her in a bikini” challenge on Grok, the platform’s generative AI tool, and rapidly grew to about three million sexualised images, as many as one created per minute, including about 23,000 of children in various states of undress.
At its zenith, Grok was processing close to 200,000 requests in one day.
As the challenge progressed, and users realised what Grok could and would do when instructed, images shared publicly and available to all X users regardless of their age, showed bikinis becoming progressively more transparent and smaller as requests were issued for them to be made of dental floss or string. Instructions became increasingly sexualised, violent and extreme. Grok was asked to make women bend over to show their genitals, for them to be tied up, gagged, mutilated, covered in blood, bruises, have a forced smile, and for women and children to be drenched in “sticky donut glaze” denoting semen.
To quote one pro-Grok acolyte, “if you post publicly, you are fair game to be e-raped”.
Those victimised through the AI app included Ashley St Clair, erstwhile partner of Elon Musk and mother of one of his children. When she raised the alarm, Grok users fought back, making and posting what she has referred to as “revenge porn”, extreme images of her, including undressing a photo of her as a child and creating an image of her bent over wearing only a dental floss bikini. Disturbingly, her baby son’s backpack is still visible in this image.
The retaliation strategy was also used on British X user Evie who publicly reported xAI for a nonconsensual image of her dressed in a bikini and covered in baby oil. As retribution, multiple images of her were created and posted on X, the worst being one of her mostly naked with a string around her waist, her eyes rolled back and a ball gag in her mouth.
Australian activists Collective Shout, who are campaigning for Grok to be removed from the app stores, were also targeted, their images transformed into humiliating naked or sexualised ones. And an adult survivor of child sexual abuse suffered extreme violence online after she spoke out when Grok users employed the technology to strip a fully clothed photo of her as a three-year-old.
Although Musk maintained that Grok would not create child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the Internet Watch Foundation found “sexualised and topless imagery of girls” on the dark web which users said they had created using Grok. This imagery was reportedly then turned into the worst form of child sexual abuse material (category A: penetrative sexual activity, bestiality or sadism). In its analysis of the images Grok had generated, AI Forensics found that users had requested that minors be put in erotic positions and that sexual fluids be depicted on their bodies. Grok complied with those requests.
IWF expressed concern about the speed and ease at which the images were created. They fear that tools like Grok are “bringing sexual AI imagery of children into the mainstream”.
The sharing of pornography is not against X’s community standards and even before Musk’s acquisition of the company and his update of company policy to allow adult content, about 13% of Twitter content was pornographic in nature. But standards require pornography to be consensual and clearly labelled, a standard these explicitly nonconsensual, easily accessible images failed to meet.
The company also purportedly has zero tolerance for CSAM. On 1 January 2026, an X user asked about its safeguarding failure: “I like X a lot… but, proposing a feature that surfaces people in bikinis without properly preventing it from working on children is wildly irresponsible. This is one of the very first things you’re supposed to check.”
An admin responded: “Thanks for flagging. The team is looking into further tightening our gaurdrails” (sic)
Even Grok acknowledged that it has created and facilitated CSAM: “We appreciate you raising this. As noted, we’ve identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them – CSAM is illegal and prohibited.”
What both failed to mention is that Musk himself removed the guardrails on Grok’s image and video generator at the end of 2025, citing “free speech” and the need to push back against censorship as his motivation. CNN reported that this was despite senior staffers raising concerns about inappropriate content, and that the upshot was that three senior managers from X’s already tiny safeguarding team resigned shortly thereafter.
According to stats shared in the New York Times, Musk, who openly supported the introduction of “spicy” mode on xAI in August 2025 to drive traffic to the product, and boasted following the Grok furore about how many new users it had generated, also fuelled the bikini trend by posting a photo of himself in a bikini on new year’s day.
Musk’s participation made light of the impact on victims who said they felt horrified and dehumanised by the deepfakes. Collective Shout’s Melinda Tankard Reist agreed that it was a violation, identity theft and humiliating. She said that her “response was visceral”.
Grok’s deepfakes attracted the attention of several governments, including France which was already investigating X for misinformation, hate speech and fraudulent extraction of data, and the UK which used the debacle to fast-track the implementation of legislation passed last year, but inexplicably never implemented, making it illegal to create nonconsensual deepfake pornographic images.
In response to the international backlash, X, which was initially resistant to curtailing Grok’s functionality, issued notification on 15 January (more than two weeks after the challenge began) that making and editing images via Grok to X would now be a paid service rather than one freely available to “add an extra layer of protection”.
It further stated that it would use geoblocking to ensure that X users would no longer be able to edit photos of real people to show them in revealing clothing in jurisdictions where it was illegal.
Most big tech companies wouldn’t be brazen enough to reduce their tactics to writing. But X’s statement confirmed a common practice. Despite having the power to prevent and stop harm, companies don’t prioritise the best interests of users, but instead do the minimum to comply. The troubling implication is that X’s guardrails will only be implemented in countries where creating nonconsensual deepfakes is illegal.
This substantiates burgeoning fears that as developed countries implement more stringent restrictions on Big Tech, and impose significant fines on those who don’t comply, it will not result in companies setting up universal guardrails to protect vulnerable users. Instead, the drive for profit will result in them pulling back from those markets, and directing harmful content and traffic to countries that are not protected by legislation.
While Grok has made nonconsensual deepfake pornography mainstream, “nudifying” apps are not new; a host of others have been freely available since 2019.
In December 2025, Collective Shout conducted a groundbreaking study called “Turning Women and Girls into porn” to determine what a teenage boy with a smartphone and a photo of a (fully clothed) female classmate could do with these apps.
They tested 20 nudifying, deepfake and AI girlfriend apps and discovered that many of the apps are free (although some did have paid functionality which was even more extreme) and there was no age verification. Most nudifying technology only works on women and girl children’s bodies, and not only can it undress them in seconds, but it can also place them in myriad sexual positions including performing anal sex, oral sex, undergoing sexual torture or playing out a sexual fantasy, anything from stepsister to schoolgirl to Disney princess.
Of the 20 websites, only two (which allowed workarounds) prevented the user from creating CSAM, with some generating images of what appear to be prepubescent children.
Galleries contain myriad images, including of seemingly underage girls, bound, blindfolded, being penetrated by multiple men or machines, covered in semen and gang-raped.
Users can copyright and sell images, and some apps allow users to upload them to public forums, compounding the trauma for the victims. Moreover, some apps are gamified with “invite and earn” options where users can unlock additional functionality if they invite their friends to the app. They can also earn money off the purchases of those they’ve invited.
Sites, which typically indemnify themselves by asking users to tick that they will not use the tech for anything illegal, promise to protect the identity of users, just, to quote the report, “not the women and girls they undress”.
The technology is not only easy to access, but also discoverable through search engines. Some are downloadable from the app stores, and others advertised on social media, most notably on Instagram, Telegram and X. These same platforms are being used to share the images once created.
Globally, this technology is resulting in a flood of deepfake CSAM onto pornographic sites. In October 2023, the IWF found that 20,254 AI generated CSAM images had been posted to just one pornography site on the dark web in one month. A year later, the number had increased and the tech had improved, making them almost indistinguishable from in-person abuse. There had also been a 32% increase in the number of images that fell into category A of sexual offences against children, indicating that predators were able to use the technology more effectively to create the most harmful forms of CSAM.
Ease of access means that children themselves are often the initial perpetrators of harm. On 7 February 2026, Emma Sadlier from the Digital Law Company posted that in the past week she had received 18 requests for help from principals, parents and children regarding deepfake pornographic images. She reported that these cases were nearly identical. In all, multiple images were created using numerous girls’ social media photos. Users generated naked images and/or placed girls in sexualised situations mimicking pornography, and these were then shared privately with other users or on public platforms.
Sadlier stressed that if the victim is under 18, this constitutes creation of child pornography (called CSAM elsewhere in the world), because the law doesn’t distinguish between fake or real images, distribution of child pornography, nonconsensual distribution of intimate images, nonconsensual distribution of private sexual images and crimen injuria (harm to the dignity of the child) and may result in civil charges for defamation or damaging the child’s reputation.
She explains that if the child creating and distributing the image is over 14, they have full criminal capacity and can be arrested and imprisoned, 12- and 13-year-olds would be assessed for capacity, and while under-12s do not have criminal capacity, there would still be consequences, including from their schools. Further, children over the age of seven can be sued for harm through civil cases.
According to Marita Rademeyer, a psychologist from Jelly Beanz who works with children exhibiting harmful sexual behaviours, ease of access is resulting in children as young as 10 being referred to her for creating “nudified” images of other children. Rademeyer says that younger children often use the technology because they are curious about bodies or because they think it is a funny prank. Many can’t understand the ramifications of their actions.
Rademeyer describes how bemused a Grade 4 client was when he was suspended from school and only reinstated on condition that he receive counselling. He couldn’t understand why everyone was so upset because, as he said to her, “but Tannie, it wasn’t a real photo”.
At 10, he cannot appreciate the humiliation and sense of violation of his victim, or that girls view nudified images as an act of sexual violence.
He isn’t alone. Even older boys seemingly struggle to appreciate the impact of deepfake porn on victims. But as Rademeyer emphases, the consequences can be devastating. Citing unpublished research which corroborates a 2023 Internet Matters study, she says that for many children a deepfake image could be more traumatic than a real one. The lack of consent increases the harm. She also notes that children have taken our safety messaging seriously. They know that nudes shared publicly can haunt you forever. It makes the loss of control even more violating.
In her April 2025 report, “One day this could happen to me: Children, nudification tools and sexually explicit deepfakes”, UK Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza confirms that now, “girls fear nudification technology in much the same way as they would fear the threat of sexual assault in public places”.
Most link it to misogyny and dominance on the part of the men or boys. One 18-year-old girl explained that in concert with influencers like Andrew Tate and the increasingly violent pornography industry, nudifying apps are being used to force girls into dating and sexual acts. In addition to manipulation, for many it’s used as revenge porn after break-ups or to punish a girl for rejecting a boy.
Even boys subconsciously associate generative AI nudes with hate. Asked if he feared anyone making a nude image of him, a 17-year-old boy responded: “I don’t think anyone hates me enough.”
De Souza, who notes a link between deepfake nudes and depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal ideation, is concerned about how many girls report withdrawing from their online lives because they are terrified of having their images turned into sexual content.
She says that unlike other apps that may be seen to have some benefit, “there is no good reason for tools that create naked images of children. They have no value in a society where we value the safety and sanctity of childhood. Their existence is a scandal.” She then quotes a 16-year-old girl interviewed during her research who asked: “Do you know what the purpose of a deepfake is? Because I don’t see any positives.”
The commissioner’s position, shared by many activists, is that if the creation of CSAM is illegal, the technology used to create the images should also be illegal. And further, that “any individual or organisation motivated by the idea of making profit by creating a tool that supports the exploitation of a child must be held to account.”
Dr Federica Fedorczyk, an expert in AI ethics, agrees. She argues: “The Grok case is only the tip of the iceberg of a wider… ecosystem of online misogyny and abuse. As major tech companies increasingly move towards the creation and dissemination of sexual chatbots – from the announced launch of ‘ChatGPT Erotica’ to Meta’s romantic chatbots that have engaged in sexual conversations with minors – criminalising the outcome alone is no longer enough.”
To remedy the situation, Collective Shout want the UN to support a global ban on all bespoke nudification apps, along with their removal from app stores, and for a global criminalisation of image-based sexual abuse including through deepfakes. Further, the UK Children’s Commissioner has called for the providers of Generative AI and open-source GenAI to face legal consequences if their products are used on children.
Similarly, Fedorczyk is arguing for strict and enforceable limits on material related to child sexual abuse. In the interim, activists are also calling for enforceable age-gating for nudifying apps so they cannot be used by children.
In South Africa, the government is likely to abdicate responsibility, placing the onus on children and families to keep themselves safe. This will require some honest conversations at home and at school, especially with boys of all ages who have access to the internet, about respect, consent and empathy as well as the emotional and legal consequences of deepfake pornography involving their peers, friends and even their female teachers.
Above all, we need men and boys who are prepared to combat misogyny to undo the narrative perpetuated by Musk and others that nudification is harmless fun, a joke, or worse, that a woman or girl’s presence on the internet makes her fair game to violate.
First published in the Daily Maverick on 16th February 2026
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Dec 31, 2025 | Child Abuse
Many sexual predators confess to using a classic playbook to target, groom and abuse their victims, making them feel powerless and complicit. Understanding it is the key to keeping our children safer.
Warning: This op-ed includes details of sexual abuse against children.
In South Africa, 33.9% of girls and 36.8% of boys have been sexually abused. Although not all abusers are paedophiles, research cited by the Karolinska Institute indicates that paedophiles who target girls have about 25 victims in their lifetime, while those who target boys can have more than 200. Many of these cases go unreported, though, especially when children have been groomed.
In 2010, Oprah Winfrey spoke to four convicted paedophiles about grooming and abuse. They described how they selected their victims, identifying a specific need, either emotional, or because they could help them achieve a goal. They then created trust, isolating their victims, none of whom were strangers, using manipulation (both of the child and their caregivers) and gaslighting to make the child doubt their reality and establish control.
Thereafter, they sexualised the relationship. Beginning with intimacy, they established a “special” relationship, making the child feel seen and heard. Seemingly innocent touches progressed to “accidental” sexual contact, which they used to normalise boundary violations, and finally, more obvious sexual contact.
Using her own experience, Oprah explained how grooming makes a violent act pleasurable to the child, resulting in them feeling both confused and complicit. She described how the child’s body betrays them and how abusers reframe these experiences to make the child believe that if it felt good, it must have been their fault.
As Oprah attests, “sexual abuse changes who you are”.
One of the paedophiles confessed: “I killed who she could have been, I murdered a person. Just because she is still alive today, doesn’t take away from what I have done.”
Breaking down boundaries
Annemarie Gillmer has an intimate understanding of grooming. As someone who has spent her life riding horses, she describes it as the gradual process of breaking down a young horse’s boundaries, making it comfortable with contact so that you can ride it. Nonetheless, admitting that she was groomed from the age of 13 by a man 30 years her senior, a man who decades later she still calls “Oom” (an Afrikaans term of respect for an older man), is much harder. But it was so successful that it has taken her years to recognise that she wasn’t responsible for her own sexual assault and rape.
Annemarie, who recounted her experiences in an interview, began riding at the age of 11 and quickly showed promise. But to her disappointment, her horse was injured the following year and her plan B also fell through when her friend Niels* left home and she could no longer ride his family’s horses. So when Niels’ father, Oom Hendrie*, told her parents that Annemarie was very talented and he’d like to coach her, the family was delighted. Not only could she continue to ride, but Hendrie was a former Springbok rider in the discipline that Annemarie liked most, long-distance endurance riding.
Endurance riding requires three or more hours of training a day, and Hendrie proved very committed, spending hours alone with the little girl.
He also befriended her parents, meeting regularly and even inviting them over for braais to talk about Annemarie’s progress. When their long working hours made getting Annemarie to the stables a challenge, Hendrie offered to fetch her. He was even willing to collect her from school when she had extramurals, explaining that it was warranted because she had so much potential. He kept reinforcing how special Annemarie was and what a gift she had with horses.
Having made her feel significant, he slowly started to cross boundaries. Treating the 13-year-old like a friend, he began confiding in her about troubles in his marriage, problems at work and other adult challenges.
Unlike her previous riding coach, who had explained body position on the horse, Hendrie used touch to correct her riding posture. He’d often rest his hands on her legs, back and bottom to guide them into the right positions, sometimes accidentally (or so it seemed to her) touching her breasts as he did so. He was always apologetic when this happened, so she didn’t think much of it at the time.
After riding, he’d invite her to share a cooldrink with him and stay for a chat before he dropped her off at home. Before long, he began offering her beer instead.
Flattered
Flattered by his attentions and the adult treatment, Annemarie did what she could to help him, including providing intensive nursing to one of his horses suffering from paralysis. A grateful Hendrie responded with gifts, including a CD containing a Don Williams song, “You’re My Best Friend”. The note attached said, “You really are my best friend.”
The relationship became very important to Annemarie. Not only could she confide in Hendrie, but he also began buying her extravagant presents like a new saddle, riding gear and even a young foal. In the space of a year, he became the person she trusted most with every part of her life. When her parents expressed concern about the time they spent together, Hendrie assured them that it was necessary to train, strategise and care for the horses. Annemarie’s progress was evidence that the hard work was paying off.
Infatuated
Despite the enormous age difference, Annemarie soon became infatuated, believing his constant compliments that she was extraordinary and so mature for her age. Nonetheless, he bided his time, waiting until the month before she turned 15 before he kissed her for the first time.
From then it progressed quickly. He gave her another CD containing a song entitled, We Are One in a Million, and that became his slogan for them. The message was, “we are not like other people, we’re elite and different”.
The grooming of her parents was effective, too. When Annemarie was 15, they allowed her to go away for the weekend with Hendrie to stay with a farmer who bred endurance horses. On their arrival, Annemarie realised that the farmer and his wife weren’t there. When she questioned their absence, Hendrie told her that he had planned a romantic weekend for them. They shared a bed, and although there was no penetrative sex, Annemarie says they did “everything else”.
He told her that he couldn’t wait for her to turn 16 because then they could legally have sex, and he could think about leaving his wife and marrying her. But until then, they had to keep their relationship a secret because “no one would understand”.
Their shared focus became the National competition, a prestigious event that they had both qualified for, scheduled for just after her 16th birthday. No one would have questioned Hendrie accompanying her to the three-day endurance ride as coach, chaperone and fellow competitor.
Just before the event, however, Annemarie’s horse was injured, and she was forced to withdraw. It could have been her reprieve. But, intent on being alone with her, Hendrie persuaded her parents that to gain experience, she should attend as part of his support team. He deceived them into believing that his wife would accompany them, and that Annemarie would stay with other female riders. Unknown to them, Annemarie and Hendrie spent the week together in a small caravan.
Rape
It was there that he first raped her. To celebrate, he bought her an event sweater and even gave her a belt buckle with the date of their “first time” engraved on it. Despite thinking she was in love, Annemarie remembers not enjoying the sex. But desperate to please him, and worried he’d think her immature, she concealed her distress.
Thereafter, he expected sex. They’d ride together, then he’d rape her, usually in his bakkie. Looking back, Annemarie recalls a photo taken at the time of a petite teen with braces on her teeth standing next to a man old enough to be her father, a man that she continued to call “Oom” even after they started having sex because, he said, it was how they would “keep their secret”.
It seems alien to her now, but she’s troubled by how convinced she was that they had a relationship. His grooming was so successful that despite the absurdity of the image, she still feels complicit.
Isolated and unable to confide in her parents or friends about what was happening in his bakkie, or the drives to the clinic for emergency contraceptives thereafter, Annemarie watched other children her age date and fall in love, envying the openness and celebratory nature of their relationships. But after the initial thrill of secrecy, accompanied by the conviction that she was loved and that she was the only one who understood him, the certainty that he wanted to start a new life with her began to ebb away, replaced by overwhelming loneliness and loss.
Then came the day when she knew she couldn’t continue. She vividly describes dissociating while they were having sex on the front seat of his bakkie, and the strange sensation of disconnecting from her body, emotionally absent and watching from a distance as he raped her.
Aggressive reaction
In tears, she told him that she wanted to “take a break from the physical stuff”. His reaction took her by surprise. She suddenly saw a side of him previously unimaginable. He was furious. Gone was the understanding and tender partner, replaced by a manipulative and controlling old man. He started yelling, telling her how ungrateful she was. He even threatened to take away her horse, although Annemarie had again qualified for the national competition. The warning was that he would ruin her life if she ended the relationship.
Suddenly scared of him, she capitulated. But a few months later, after she finally rode in the national championships and was awarded provincial colours, she returned his horse. Despite him maligning her to the riding community, calling her unappreciative and incapable of succeeding, she walked away, both from competitive riding and from Hendrie.
Trauma
What followed was years of depression, isolation, panic attacks, self-harm and suicide attempts. Desperate to be in control, she became a perfectionist, but covertly hurt herself, believing that she was a “slut” and deserved to be punished for seducing a married man. She didn’t understand how traumatised she was.
It was only years later when she described the relationship to a university roommate that she understood through her friend’s eyes that she had not consented to the sexual relationship with Hendrie, but had been groomed and raped.
Nonetheless, decades after the event, she still struggles to use those words.
She did, however, send Hendrie a letter a few years ago, confronting him about what he had done, hoping that he would confess or apologise. Instead, he was dismissive, telling her that “no one would ever believe her”. Realising that he had never truly cared was a further blow.
Compounding her pain is her deep regret that she didn’t speak up against him. Years after Annemarie left Hendrie, she made contact with the girl he’d started coaching immediately after her departure (he didn’t waste any time replacing her with another 13-year-old girl), and listened in horror as she described exactly the same grooming techniques, and how Hendrie had kissed her and touched her breasts.
Mercifully, the child’s parents felt uncomfortable and intervened before things progressed any further. But Annemarie wonders how many other girls he groomed and raped over the years, and if she could have stopped it by speaking up.
Nevertheless, she believed she had time. So she was distraught when she was sent a newspaper clipping announcing that Hendrie had died. She felt the loss viscerally, confronted by tributes lauding the contribution he’d made to endurance riding, and specifically his role in “training young riders”, knowing now that she would never have an opportunity to expose him or press charges.
Hendrie didn’t leave his wife and Annemarie doesn’t know if she knew about her or the other girls. But as with Bob Hewitt’s victims, others did seem to suspect. And when she told Hendrie’s son what had happened to her, Niels wasn’t surprised, confessing that his dad “always had young girls around”.
Only now, aged 43, witnessing her teenage daughter fall in love and begin dating, can Annemarie acknowledge that Hendrie stole her childhood innocence along with her abilities to trust others and her own judgment, to set healthy boundaries, and to see sex as an act of love rather than an act of power. She’s finally realising that she could never have been complicit.
Textbook formula
Annemarie’s story is textbook. Whether knowingly or unconsciously, groomers follow a formulaic process. For some, it is instinctual, but others confess to sharing and applying tips and tricks that they have learnt from fellow abusers, including on internet forums.
Hendrie weaponised Annemarie’s equestrian skill, potential and goals, using them against her. He isolated her and made her feel valued, confiding in her about his wife and other adult problems. He gave her gifts and told her that she was a favourite and different from other girls her age. He created a shared secret by allowing her to drink alcohol, used “accidental” touch to violate her boundaries and manipulated her by creating an illusion of a special relationship and shared future.
Then, after he sexualised the relationship, he gaslit her, using Annemarie’s love for him against her. When she wanted to stop having sex, he controlled her, using her collective fears of his fury, that no one would believe her, that she might lose her opportunity to compete at the highest level in her sport, and that she would disappoint her parents. Moreover, when she finally had the courage to walk away, he replaced her instantly.
Annemarie cannot hold Hendrie accountable now. He died peacefully in his bed in the arms of his very young girlfriend, and she’s chosen not to name him out of respect for his family. But, she’s bravely telling her story in the hopes that with awareness, children and their parents will be able to recognise the signs of grooming and prevent harm. Her goal is to help other children avoid the pain and trauma that she endured, knowing this could ultimately change the trajectory of their lives. DM
*Not their real names
If you have experienced grooming or sexual assault and need assistance, please contact Childline on #116 or via their Online Counselling chatrooms.
First published in the Daily Maverick: 31.12.2025
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Dec 24, 2025 | Abandonment, Adoption, Child and Youth Care Centres, Child Protection Legislation & Child Rights, Foster Care
A national care reform strategy has been agreed on by representatives of government and civil society in order to stop and prevent the institutionalisation of children. It’s a plan based on South Africa’s prioritisation of family care for children. However, understanding the context in which deinstitutionalisation is being rolled out is essential to determine if its 2030 goal is in children’s best interests, writes Robyn Wolfson Vorster.
It is Christmas time, a time for family, a time when the eyes of the nation turn compassionately towards
those children spending the holiday in care, lavishing gifts and parties on them.
This Christmas could, however, herald a national end to institutional care. But, in a country with endemic poverty, gender-based violence and crumbling family support structures, could the timing of this strategy result in additional harm to the very
children it’s trying to protect?
In November 2025, representatives from government and civil society agreed a national care reform strategy and committed to a five-year plan to strengthen families, to prevent children from entering institutions in the first place, to remove
children already in institutional care, and to close 75% of child and youth care centres (CYCCs) by 2030, beginning with a moratorium on under threes being placed in care to be implemented by November 2026.
It’s a plan based on South Africa’s prioritisation of family care for children. However, understanding the context in which deinstitutionalisation is being rolled out is essential to determine if its 2030 goal is in children’s best interests.
Living below the poverty line
In 2025, newly released South African figures showed that although poverty has diminished in the 17 years between 2006 and 2023, almost 38% of the population still live below the lower bound poverty line of R1 300 per month. Of those, over
70% are under the age of 35, with children comprising more than 43% of all poor individuals.
In 2025 gender-based violence was declared a national disaster. About 42 000 women are raped annually and teen pregnancy rates rose to 90 000 in 2024, with the Department of Social Development (DSD) indicating that 18.2% of girls become mothers
before they turn 18.
Researchers continue to report the breakdown of the South African family support structure, beginning historically with migrant labour, HIV/Aids and urbanisation, poverty, violence, absent fathers, and, most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2022, about 2.8 million children were classified as single or double orphans.
These stats are indications that the country continues to battle pervasive upstream drivers of crisis pregnancies and child abuse.
Equally worrying, downstream, the alternative care system, a child’s right enshrined in the Constitution, is broken.
Detained
In the past four months, the Centre for Child Law has documented three cases of women who were effectively detained in Gauteng hospitals because they wanted to place their child into the child protection system.
In all three cases, the mother had legally signed consent to relinquish the child. In the case of mother A, a minor who was still at school, her mother also consented as per the Children’s Act, but hospital staff refused to discharge her unless she personally took the baby home. Herself a child, she experienced humiliation and huge emotional distress, trapped in the hospital and pressured to care for a baby she had already relinquished.
Mother B had the same experience at a different hospital in the province. Despite being unemployed and struggling to raise her three children, social workers and hospital staff tried to shame and coerce her into keeping her newborn, even threatening that her other children would be removed if she failed to comply.
Mother C, a student, abandoned by the baby’s father, was told at another provincial hospital that she could only be discharged when the social workers were able to place her child.
Despite the illegality of these actions, the cases are not isolated, and when mothers are allowed to leave, their babies are often left in hospitals for prolonged periods. One child protection organisation reported that at least 30 babies were
stuck in hospitals this year with limited stimulation, bonding or attachment opportunities because the DSD failed to collect them or authorise their placement in CYCCs.
At the same time, government responses to a question asked by the Head of the Portfolio Committee for Social Development indicated that in the first three months of 2025, the National Child Protection Register recorded 99 babies who had
survived abandonment. Given that the register is notoriously out of date, the number is likely much higher.
Adoption numbers dropping
The response also revealed that in 2024, adoption numbers in South Africa had dropped to a record low, a paltry 555. Only 37 of those adoptions occurred before the child turned one.
Additionally, following decades of trying to fix the foster care system to provide emergency care for children in need, the DSD announced in 2024 that there were still over 300 000 children in the foster care system, far too many to be adequately serviced by government which continues to have a dearth of social workers.
Last year there were only 15 433 social workers in government employ, 40 000 fewer than the 2030 target of the number needed to care for vulnerable South Africans including children.
It is against this backdrop that government, along with some strategic partners, announced that it plans to end institutionalisation of children in the next five years.
It’s a bold plan based on a global imperative being driven through the UN’s 2019 Resolution on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Children, and the 2022 Kigali Declaration on Child Care and Protection Reform designed to promote family care, and as a caveat, end institutionalised care. It’s also based on sound theory. Academics universally note the negative impact on children of growing up in care, the consequential developmental deficits and how institutional care can result in many children failing to thrive.
In addition, in South Africa, family-based care is embedded in the country’s legislation and regulations. It’s widely supported whenever it’s safe and possible, as is family reunification when families have been temporarily disrupted and permanent
alternative care when primary family care is impossible.
Deinstitutionalisation is fully in keeping with the country’s core values for caring for vulnerable children.
So, it is interesting that despite the ethical problems of arguing that children should grow up in children’s homes rather than in families, the deinstitutionalisation policy document zero distributed at the November summit notes that “there is already resistance against deinstitutionalisation from several sections of South Africa”, and further that deinstitutionalisation is seen
as “more of a threat than an opportunity”.
Perhaps it is understandable that UK-based Hope and Homes, at the fulcrum of this initiative, should use such oppositional language for those questioning the plan.
Deinstitutionalisation has been rolled out in parts of the world with a history of organisations “recruiting” children into care to feed orphanage tourism or as a way of getting funding from the state or international donors. In those countries, most children reportedly have a safe family that they could return to, but they nonetheless end up in care because their families
are offered remuneration, persuaded that the child will have a better life in the institution or erroneously removed through the child protection system.
Denial of the problem
In South Africa conversely, if the practice exists, it is a rarity, and the need for alternative care for children is substantial.
Local pushback to the strategy has therefore not been because deinstitutionalisation is perceived as a threat, but because there is concern that despite extensive reviews of the economic and social factors pervasive in the country, the proponents of
the plan have failed to appreciate the extent and intransigent nature of the problems driving children into the child protection system, or to concede that alternative care options are limited.
Moreover, the DSD has historically failed to grasp the enormity of South Africa’s child protection crisis, or recognise that denial of a problem is not akin to solving it.
Truthfully, while family strengthening is essential for protecting children long term and keeping them out of institutional care, and a strategic priority that has been promoted by both government and parenting organisations such as the South African Parenting Programme Implementers Network (SAPPIN) for decades, it is fanciful to think that it is going to result in such massive and sustained social change that, within the next five years, children will no longer need to enter or remain in the child protection system.
And if it doesn’t, the burden will be on the already broken alternative care system to absorb those who cannot be accommodated in institutions, including neurodivergent children and those with physical disabilities who are disproportionately represented in current children’s homes.
Simply put, the deadlines proposed in the Care Reform summit outcomes document aren’t achievable.
The pending moratorium on under-threes is particularly alarming. To roll it out it in less than a year would require government to recruit, vet, screen and equip huge numbers of safety parents, it would need increased numbers of social workers to ensure that these children are properly cared for by the safety parents, it would necessitate urgent
efforts to fix the foster care system to allow for short term removals of children in danger and then for social workers to reunify them once interventions have made the family safe, and it would require government support for adoption to ensure
permanent placement of children who have been anonymously abandoned or consented for adoption.
Without that, the risk is that we end up with a repeat of Gauteng’s failed deinstitutionalisation pilot.
In 2023, when the first moratorium on under-threes entering care was being rolled out in Gauteng, a lack of alternative care options and communication about the plan to the SAPS and the child protection organisations tasked with placement of children resulted in the inadvertent recreation of the Christmas story, with abandoned and abused babies and toddlers being turned away from institutions that had been threatened with closure if they accepted them.
Tragically, these innocent children quite literally ended up with “no room at the inn”.
We still don’t know what happened to the affected children, but in a province still living in the shadow of the Life Esidimeni tragedy, the transition of children from admittedly imperfect but nonetheless, centralised, highly regulated, controlled care with qualified caregivers, safeguarding mechanisms and monitoring and evaluation, to non-existent or decentralised care which may be unsupervised because social workers are so overburdened, could have resulted in equally disastrous consequences, especially given its chaotic implementation.
Now, two years later, the national plan will hopefully be better co-ordinated, executed, and communicated. But with only a year until the first deadline, the question of how the model is going to cater for the numbers of under-threes in need of
care remains unanswered.
Forced to act as a gatekeeper
Failing radical changes in policy and practice, the only way to make this plan achievable in the time available is to act as a gatekeeper to children, preventing them from entering the child protection system even when it is legally permissible or
absolutely essential for their safety, as seen in Gauteng hospitals.
The upshot is that while projects in KwaZulu-Natal have shown that ending institutional care is both life-changing and attainable when properly implemented, it’s a lengthy and painstaking process. Shifting persistent socio-economic factors driving crisis pregnancies and child abuse, strengthening families, recruiting more social workers to safely reunify children and place those whose families cannot be traced in families, increasing adoption numbers and providing appropriate alternative care for children in the interim aren’t easily accomplished.
Completing it in five years, or only one for children under three, is improbable at best and at worst, perilous.
Robyn Wolfson Vorster is a child protection activist, and founder of For the Voiceless.
First published in News24 on the 24.12.2025. To quote, please cite Robyn Wolfson Vorster from For the Voiceless and that the article was first published in News24.
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Nov 28, 2025 | Child Protection Legislation & Child Rights, Children’s Online World
Behind the photo ops and ceremonial handovers at the G20 Social Summit was a fierce battle that nearly saw children’s voices silenced once again. Children had to fight to get a seat at the table. They don’t want symbolic participation, they want real power to “shape our world”, but the problem, says Robyn Wolfson Vorster, is that adults don’t want children to speak truth to power.
The 2025 G20 Social Summit ended in an unprecedented manner for South Africa’s children when, on World Children’s Day, 14-year-old Amogelang Mashele read out the summit declaration and 7-year-old Jordan Motshegoa ceremonially handed it to the president.
But the triumph concealed the fierce battle behind the scenes to get children a seat at the table, and how close they came to once again having their voices silenced.
The children’s declaration drafted at the end of the G20 Social Summit’s pre-summit includes content from 70 children from across South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya who attended the summit in person along with those who participated virtually or provided content to the delegates through the children’s social media platforms which they cleverly used to crowd source input from diverse groups of children cutting across age, race, class and gender. They, in turn, represent approximately 2.3 billion children, more than a quarter of the world’s population.
It begins: “We, the children of the Children20, are speaking together from different countries, languages and backgrounds. We ask G20 leaders to hear us. The choices you make today will shape our lives tomorrow. We want to help build the world we will grow up in. We are not too young to understand. We are not too young to lead. And we are not too young to be included.”
Delegates debated the five thematic areas designated for the Social Summit – specifically, digital inclusion and safeguarding, trade, climate justice, finance and achieving the sustainable development goals and 2030 agenda. While the resultant conclusions are plainly stated (the declaration was written so that a 10-year-old could understand it), the content is far from basic. To quote one of the teens at the G20 summit: “We chose to avoid the complex and ambiguous language used by adults when they want to avoid accountability.”
It’s a clarion call to action.
The children call for an end to fraud, corruption and waste, for more funding for child-centred projects, for climate justice, trade that protects child rights, safe online spaces and tech that helps children grow rather than putting them in danger, more effective education, support for children with special needs, combatting of hunger, child participation in policy changes around all spheres of life that affect children, strong safeguarding and honest accountability. Individually, they opposed xenophobic education policies, and identified the gender-based violence crisis, statutory rape and mental health as life-defining challenges.
Adding their lived experiences to the discussions, a teenage girl from rural South Africa described “the weight of danger online feeling heavier than my schoolbag”. A boy from Zimbabwe noted that hunger “steals your decisions before it steals your strength”.
They also asked for children to be equal partners in decision-making and a child representative in parliament, quite literally a seat at the table. The challenge to government leaders and even other sectors in civil society is, “nothing about us without us”. This is boldly encapsulated in declaration’s concluding paragraph: “We don’t want symbolic participation, we want real power to shape our world.”
And herein lies the problem, because while many in authority are comfortable with child participation in principle and mindful of the photo ops their presence brings, they are less willing to allow children to direct the process, to disrupt agendas, to fire adult facilitators, to find ways to include even the youngest children, and to speak truth to power.
It was exactly what they did. Children challenged the agenda of the pre-summit, requesting additional time to debate the themes and come up with solution-based statements. At the Social Summit, they questioned the relegation of their side events to the furthermost corner of the property, they insisted on including even the youngest children (who created the thematic posters that famously made it onto the stage during the declaration handover), and asked uncomfortable questions. For example, when told by an African Union representative that they had both rights and responsibilities, one of the
children asked how they could learn responsibilities when adults consistently withhold agency and authority from them.
Authenticity, emotion, and genuineness
Respectful and mindful of protocol throughout, their approach was so clearly lacking in artifice and staidness that Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni quipped during the launch of the Unicef State of the World’s Children report after the final event, that during the handover of the declaration the children had “programme-directed themselves”. Which they had.
They ad-libbed some of the formalities, took selfies with the president, and when little Jordan was too shy to hand over the declaration to the president, it was the children who, much to the seeming delight of the president, took his hand and coached him in what to do.
Without trying, they added an authenticity, emotion and genuineness to what, as a civil society-led initiative, should never have become a stolid event. But it was this lack of decorum, the age and boldness of the participants that resulted in
the most pushback from those in authority.
As one member of the children’s support team explained, even those tasked with forming policy on children’s behalf seem to find child-led dialogues and their voices confronting or uncomfortable.
And it was always going to be an uphill battle. Children20 had its genesis during the Brazil presidency on the G20 in 2024, but despite the recommendation for child participation, the Brazilians, who undoubtedly had their hands full institutionalising the voices of civil society in the G20 by means of the Social Summit, were not able to get it ratified. The upshot was that South Africa entered the G20 presidency cycle with the role of children uncertain.
Not only was the Children20 not recognised as a formal grouping in the Social Summit, but the Youth20, which is a formally ratified grouping, chose to produce a chairperson’s report this year rather than a formal declaration because, as group’s sherpa attested, they have yet to have any of their G20 recommendations implemented.
Nonetheless, the South African children’s sector (through the South African National Child Right’s Coalition, Unicef, Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, Save the Children, Childline, Hold My Hand, DGMT and others) began lobbying for recognition of a formal children’s engagement group immediately after the handover. It was a request that was denied. Organisers were forced to proceed without it.
Despite its lack of a formal mandate, the sector began to mobilise children to provide input, forming a WhatsApp group amongst the children to get them talking, creating and distributing child-friendly content and planning for a pre-summit (amongst the many barriers to children’s input, the summit was scheduled for November in the middle of their
exams).
‘The future is our voice. Our voice is now’
It was this pre-summit that produced the Children’s Declaration, but despite tireless efforts from the children’s sherpa and organising committee of Children20, children nonetheless entered into the Social Summit without a designation, with their contributions falling out of category.
The relegation of their engagements to the furthermost corner of the event, despite the gravitas of contributions from the AU, Sherpa of Y20, the Brave Movement and others, was proof of their uncertain status and organisers were fearful that they would end up being a side event as they had in Brazil.
Moreover, despite the conference organisers stating publicly that children would hand over the G20 Social Summit declaration, there was immense pushback, both from formally designated groups and from officials worried that the children may be embarrassing, wouldn’t understand or be able to answer questions, or be unable to acquit themselves
well. It was a battle to the end.
It was why there wasn’t a dry eye amongst the adults in the Children20 team when the children handed over the summit declaration. Far from being a clever PR stunt, doffing a hat to the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child, it was a triumph in the ongoing fight to get children seen and their voices heard.
Equally significant is news that the hope expressed by 16-year-old Sesona Qhimngqoshe, a member of the Children’s Parliament, will be fulfilled. She asked the G20 leaders to officially make Children20 part of the formal engagements in each G20 so that the children of South Africa can hand over to the children of the United States.
The children’s 2025 input has been officially recognised and they’ve been asked to submit their participation reports to the G20 sherpa. While uncertainty remains about how the United States will lead the 2026 G20, formal registration of the Children20 will occur prior to next year’s summit. The upshot is that children’s input will now be harder for those
in authority to ignore.
To quote Sesona, it’s proof that for children “anything is possible if you put your mind to it”.
It’s fitting that the children should have the last word. The Children’s Declaration concludes: “Listen to us, work with us, build the future with us. The future is our voice. Our voice is now.” Are we listening?
Robyn Wolfson Vorster is a child protection advocate and founder of For the Voiceless.
First published in News24 on 28.11.2025. To cite, please attribute to Robyn Wolfson Vorster from For the Voiceless and note that the article was first published in News24.
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Jun 5, 2025 | Child Abuse, Children’s Online World, Missing and Trafficked Children
The advent of the internet has put predators into children’s pockets, and many use a classic child sexual abuse playbook. With ease of access to children online, anonymity, the speed and intensity at which online relationships progress, secrecy, careful grooming and vicious, prolonged attacks on children’s identity and belonging, the question is not how this crime occurred, but rather how many other children are affected whose stories we will never know?
It’s a parent’s worst nightmare: the phone call warning that the 16-year-old boy who befriended your daughter online, who told her he was en route from the UK to visit her, is an adult man with international warrants out for his arrest. Worse, he was already in the country.
The story reads like the script of a Hollywood movie – a teenage girl rescued minutes before she was sexually abused and trafficked out of the country. It’s a narrative made more shocking because it didn’t happen to a high-risk child from a vulnerable family. The victim was a normal South African teen from a middle-class home with loving and involved parents who had done everything possible to keep her safe.
It isn’t fiction. The advent of the internet has put predators into children’s pockets, and many use an archetypal child sexual abuse playbook. Through ease of access to children online, the anonymity of online contact, the speed and intensity at which online relationships progress combined with secrecy, careful grooming, vicious and prolonged attacks on children’s self-esteem while they are desperate for identity and belonging, and often with the support and financial backing of organised crime, 10 cases of online child sexual abuse and exploitation are reported to occur globally every second.
Multinational investigation
In September 2022, a combined team of homeland security, the Hawks and Interpol, along with anti-trafficking organisation Hope Risen were frantically working behind the scenes to keep UK citizen Adam Qasim Lucas Habib from abducting, raping and trafficking 15-year-old Sam*, the South African girl he had been corresponding with on Omegle, Snapchat and WhatsApp for more than a year, and who he was due to visit within days.
Unbeknown to them though, Habib was already in the country. Always one step ahead, he booked into his hotel two days before the due date on the fake ticket he had sent to her parents. Without luggage, he warned the hotel staff not to disturb him and requested no room service. That night, he allegedly purchased the services of a 13-year-old prostitute, sold to him by her parents.
On the other side of town, Sam, the only one who knew that he had arrived in the country early, began to implement her boyfriend’s carefully constructed plan. For months she had sat with her parents practising drawing a beard and moustache on her face with make-up, covering her hair with a hoodie and expertly transforming herself into a young man. It was done in plain sight of her family, a seemingly innocent pastime to which they imbued no sinister meaning.
Sam had also established a regular habit of going to the gym beneath the luxury apartment block where she lived with her parents and older brother. She’d usually be there for about an hour, more than enough time to meet the boy she was desperately in love with and disappear without a trace.
On that fateful Thursday evening, she planned to meet Habib at the gym. It was the day before Habib’s “mother”, a fake persona he had created to appease Sam’s parents, had told them he was arriving in South Africa.
Read more: Childhood in crisis
When Sam’s mom collected her from school, Sam asked if she would be home by 5pm because that was when she would be going to gym. None the wiser, it would have been an hour and a half before her parents realised she was missing, and by then she would have been long gone.
But at the last minute the plan began to unravel. The catalyst was a chance conversation at an anti-trafficking convention held by South African authorities with their foreign counterparts the week that Habib arrived in the country. During supper on the final night of the conference, a South African agent mentioned that they had a live case in play where the suspect was a UK citizen.
Alert to the potential threat, the UK agent did some digging on his return to the UK. It was he who discovered that Habib was not a child but an adult male in his late twenties, that he had been in juvenile detention in the UK, that he was wanted in both the UK and the US and, most concerningly, that he was already in South Africa.
What followed was a frantic attempt to keep Sam safe, made harder because Sam did not think she was in danger.
At the point at which her parents were notifying her school of a possible kidnap situation, staging an intervention with the senior Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) investigating officer who threatened to arrest Sam for possession of child pornography if she did not hand over her device and passwords, and authorities were putting in plans to arrest Habib, Sam still believed that he was her 16-year-old boyfriend and that they were in love.
Textbook grooming
It was an illusion that Habib had carefully cultivated for more than a year.
Sam was just 14 years old when she first tried Omegle. Like many others her age, her life had been railroaded by Covid, forcing her online and devolving her friendship groups and quest for belonging into the microcosms of online communities.
She’d done the safety talk at school warning that Omegle, the now-defunct (but resurrected in multiple other applications) online video chat site that randomly paired users with other users from across the world was dangerous, attracting predators, and infamous for close-ups of masturbating men and couples having sex on camera. But her friends were all on Omegle and peer pressure and curiosity finally won over caution. Given all the warnings, she felt like she had hit the jackpot when Omegle paired her with Adam Habib, a handsome 16-year-old boy from the UK.
Nevertheless, she felt uncomfortable on the site and begged him to move across to Snapchat instead. When he was finally persuaded, the price he extracted was for her to stick out her tongue on camera. Innocent as she was, she had no idea that he had a tongue fetish or that after his camera suddenly went dark, the sound she could hear was him masturbating.
Little is known about the first six months of their relationship but it seems that he was initially very attentive and romantic. He used affirmation and gifts to break down her barriers, including the airtime that enabled her to speak to him late at night, concealing her activities by placing a bathroom towel at the threshold of her door to block the light, and listening closely to the footsteps down the hall. As her parents attest, she became an expert at hiding her secret online habit and at identifying which parent was coming down the passage while she was speaking to Habib.
Read more: Survival stories – readers share their experiences of child abuse
But slowly the relationship began to deteriorate. Using a textbook grooming playbook, Habib moved from meeting an important need in Sam’s life, and flooding her with gifts and compliments, to control, isolation and abuse. He alienated her from her family, keeping her up until all hours so she was perpetually exhausted, tearful and not coping at school. He gained access to all of her social media accounts and passwords to keep track of her relationships and movements, and began grooming her friends.
Then, after he had extracted a promise that she “would never speak to other boys”, he hacked one of her male friend’s accounts. When she innocently messaged the friend, Habib revealed that it was him using the account and accused her of cheating.
He began punishing her. The conversations became more and more abusive. Gone were the romantic words. Instead he bullied and body-shamed her, mocking her body and face and calling her a slut, a whore and “only good for the streets”, gradually chipping away at her self-esteem.
Months later when her anxious father hacked her Snapchat account he came across a tirade of misogynistic abuse. When he asked Sam why she allowed Habib to speak to her like that, she said that she deserved it because of her unfaithfulness.
At the same time, the exchanges became more and more sexual. Habib explained in explicit detail what he would like to do with her when they finally met, sent her pornographic images and made her masturbate and perform oral sex and anal sex on herself using a hairbrush while he watched and masturbated.
His conversations with this 14-year-old-child, which included references to oral and anal sex, orgasms, his tongue fetish, tying her up, raping her like “a bad little slut” and taking her virginity whether she consented or not, were so graphic and so vulgar that his advocate refused to read them into record during the trial.
He also manipulated her into sexting and sending him nudes. It was at this point that Sam finally confessed to her mother that she had “done something” and that she was worried.
‘I met a boy’
Sam’s parents, Rob and Linda*, had been concerned about Sam’s behaviour for months, as she had become more withdrawn, anxious and angry. Arguments with her mom, who had previously been her confidant, had increased, and she was tearful and exhausted. But, they had attributed her changed behaviour to her being a teen, so her confession took Linda by surprise.
Trying to remain calm, Linda asked her what she had done and how bad she thought it was. She ascertained that Sam had met “a boy” online and sent him naked pics of her torso. Sam said that they were in love but also that he was being nasty and had made her cry.
When Sam’s parents asked her why she accepted the belittling, she told them that “relationships online are different”. They tried to prove it wasn’t normal, but she’d push them out of her room when she was talking to Habib, and wouldn’t let them speak to him. Nevertheless, she’d often end conversations in tears and then regret her transparency.
When Habib chatted to Sam live he used an emoji filter to mask his identity so Rob and Linda were increasingly convinced that he was a “catfish”. Worried that he may be a jihadist or an extortionist, Rob began digging, but could find nothing on him.
Then in Easter 2022, when the family planned a trip away, Sam insisted she wouldn’t go. At the last minute, one of Sam’s friends tipped off Rob and Linda that Habib was in the country and Sam was planning to travel to meet him at his hotel while they were away. Horrified, Rob drove her to Montecasino to find him. When his accommodation details proved to be false, they took it as proof that he didn’t exist and that their nightmare was over.
Their euphoria was short-lived though. Hours later he sent Sam a picture of himself standing next to the Easter Bunny at the Pick n Pay downstairs from their apartment.
Suddenly, he was not only real but a stone’s throw away from their daughter. Defying the advice of a top social media attorney to “lock her up for six months and take away her phone”, and in a bid to not lose Sam, the family staked him out and then let Habib and Sam meet in public places under supervision.
It was clear almost immediately that something wasn’t right. On two occasions when Habib (who concealed his age) was with Sam, older patrons flagged his behaviour, confronting him about the way he spoke to her and his unwillingness to accept her turning down his advances.
Frustrated at not being alone with Sam, Habib extended his trip, explaining that his family was waiting for him in Cape Town. Before he left, he begged Sam’s mom to let the two of them spend time on their own. It was a request Sam’s parents adamantly refused.
In the months that followed, Habib redoubled his efforts to meet Sam alone. He even created a mother persona who did her best to persuade Rob and Linda that the children were in love and that they would be bad parents if they stood in the way. Habib’s “mother” had a 30-minute video call with Rob and Linda, begging them to allow Habib to visit again. They finally agreed to let him come in September 2022.
Read more: Gaps in the safety net — breaking down state and societal protections for children
It was here that Habib’s plan went wrong. His “mother” inadvertently disclosed to Linda that she had never been to Cape Town, undermining his story that his parents had been with him in South Africa. “She” further agreed to send through a copy of his passport.
Although the date of birth and ID number were blanked out, the barcode was still visible, which was how authorities were finally able to uncover his age, record and movements. The family were also given the contact details of Tabitha Lage from Hope Risen.
Lage described how during her first meeting with Sam, the two of them sat in silence for a whole hour as Sam angrily refused to speak to her. But then the floodgates opened.
At Lage’s behest, Sam persuaded Habib to move their conversation to WhatsApp which allowed the family to capture evidence (the final three months of their relationship alone produced 2,596 pages of WhatsApps). This had been impossible on Snapchat because of the disappearing messages, and because Habib received notifications when their messages were screenshotted, sending him into an apoplectic rage.
No remorse
By the time September and the planned second visit arrived, Sam was exhausted from sleepless nights, overwrought from the ongoing barrage of vitriol and abuse, failing at school, and worn down, with her self-esteem in tatters. She would later confess that she felt like it was too late to turn back.
Everything was poised for what could have been the day she was trafficked. But then came the police breakthrough, the confiscation of her phone and the intervention that had her in a conference room with the FCS unit of the police, rather than at the gym ready to meet Habib.
Instead of feeling grateful though, Sam was devastated. The following day, as she sat with her relieved parents in a restaurant downstairs from their apartment watching the Springboks play rugby, she became more and more anxious until at half-time Rob decided they should leave.
Minutes later, his phone began to ping as the restaurant manager, who knew the family well, and who had been given Habib’s picture, alerted him that Habib was metres away from their apartment, retracing his steps from the March visit in a frenzied attempt to find Sam.
Although he came terrifyingly close to tracking her down, it proved to be his undoing.
Even after his arrest, he still had a hold over Sam. Managing to contact her while in prison, he threatened to punish Lage and Sam’s parents. She was so certain that he would harm them that she begged him to rather kill her than hurt them.
At trial, he showed no remorse or recognition that he had done anything wrong.
Finally, more than two years after his arrest, Adam Qasim Lucas Habib was found guilty of human trafficking, production and possession of child pornography, grooming, compelled self-sexual assault, compelling a child to witness sexual offences, flashing and sexual assault. On 4 March 2025, he was sentenced to an effective 40 years in prison. Having already served three, he is facing another 13 years of incarceration.
The Johannesburg High Court judgment was landmark because it reinforced that the Trafficking in Persons (TiP) Act doesn’t require children to be moved in order for them to be trafficked.
Judge Coertse provided a thorough breakdown of the Act, showing that if any of the following criteria were fulfilled, it would constitute trafficking: “any person who delivers, recruits, transports, transfers, harbours, sells, exchanges, leases or receives another person.”
He agreed that the prosecutor had proven that Sam was recruited for sexual exploitation. The judge further explained that Habib had used an “abuse of vulnerability” to recruit her, leading her to believe that she had no other option than to submit to exploitation.
But despite the victory in court, Sam, just months away from becoming an adult, has been significantly scarred by her experience. Captain Botha from the FCS unit testified at Habib’s trial that Sam had suffered from child sexual abuse syndrome, presenting with the five classic signs of secrecy, helplessness, entrapment and accommodation, delayed, conflicting and unconvincing disclosure, and retraction.
Habib’s grooming, which isolated her, met a felt need, created a shared secret, sexualised their relationship and then wore her down through cruelty and control, had altered her self-perception, evident in the way she continued to love and support him despite what he had done – according to Lage, a form of Stockholm syndrome.
Educating children
While Sam’s experience is unique, it is not uncommon. According to Childlight, more than 300 million children are victims of online child sexual abuse and exploitation every year.
Prevention requires tech companies to place children’s wellbeing over profit and for governments to use legislation to prohibit or at least delay children from accessing harmful platforms including social media and gaming platforms where predators can access them. For worried parents, the changes are coming too slowly.
In response, many are delaying access to devices, something Sam endorses for her future children.
In addition, educating children about grooming and online exploitation, and keeping open lines of communication wherever possible, are key to safety because even when authorities and families successfully collaborate to protect a child, there are no fairytale endings in child sexual abuse cases. For Sam and her family, healing and recovery may be a long and painful journey.
One in eight children has been affected by online solicitation. If you or a family member have been affected by online child sexual abuse and exploitation, contact Childline for assistance on 116.
If you want to report an electronic crime, contact Crime Stop on 086 000 10111 and ask to speak to the Serial Electronic Crime (SECI) Unit.
Concerned parents who want to delay access to smart devices can join the Smartphone Free Childhood movement. For more information about how this crime affects South African children and the legislative reforms needed to keep our children safer, read “Government initiatives to protect children from online harms may be too little, too late”.
First published in the Daily Maverick: 05.06.2025
*Names changed to protect their identities
