Africa-Press – South-Africa. The defence of the two men and a woman on trial for human trafficking in Cape Town and Springbok announced their intention to apply for a discharge after the State rested its case in the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday.
Brothers Edward and Yannick Ayuk, and Edward’s estranged wife, Leandra Williams Ayuk, were arrested by the Hawks on a long list of charges in which they are accused of running a brothel and recruiting vulnerable drug-addicted girls and women who are estranged from their families, then not letting them leave.
Some of the women testified that their job was to stand at the lower end of Koeberg Road in Cape Town, where it passes the Ysterplaat military base and sell sexual services. One witness said the exchange would be in a car or at the client’s home, and could also be booked by cellphone.
In return, they got somewhere to stay, food, and a limited amount of free drugs. One of the women testified that she had to hand over all of her takings every day.
She also alleged that any form of disobedience or insubordination was met with either a beating or severe humiliation.
The accused deny the charges against them and allege that it was a plot against them by an ex-policeman in Milnerton.
They say their trouble started when they went to rescue a woman who was mugged outside their house in Brooklyn, Milnerton. They chased after the mugger in their car, and when they got out to confront him, he hijacked their vehicle.
The Ayuks reported the hijacking to the police. They later discovered that the hijacking suspect’s brother was a sergeant at the Milnerton police station at the time, and he was given the case file.
They allege that he orchestrated a campaign of false arrests in retaliation for the hijacking case.
This week the court heard that the brother left the police and now owns at least 20 houses in Milnerton. He was one of the subjects of a recent protest march in the area by residents complaining about houses being scooped up and converted into boarding houses, spazas and brothels.
The police raided the house in a sequence of events involving one of the women getting hit by a car and going to hospital. She asked her father to send her money but he refused saying he would not fund her drug addiction. However, he contacted the police for advice, and eventually the police raided the house in August 2017.
That woman was admitted to a drug rehabilitation facility and then her father took her back home to East London.
When she came up to Cape Town to testify at the trial, she said that when she was offered the sex work job in Cape Town, she was given drugs to take on the bus so that she would not go into withdrawal because she was addicted to hard drugs. Recreational drugs and sex work are prohibited in South Africa.
The judge will have to weigh up all the evidence and testimony so far to decide whether the accused have met the threshold for acquittal at this trial stage in terms of Section 174 of the Criminal Procedure Act.
A date will be set for the official application, and if it is not successful, the trial could proceed to the accused giving evidence and being cross-examined.
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