The Cape Town Regional Court on Wednesday granted a fashion photographer leave to appeal his conviction and four-year jail sentence for sexual offences against a five-year-old girl.
Neil Herman (48) appeared before Judge Wilma van der Merwe, who extended his R1 000 bail pending the outcome of the appeal.
In a courtroom packed to capacity, Van der Merwe told Herman he will in due course receive a letter informing him of the outcome of the appeal. If his appeal fails, the letter will inform Herman where, when and to whom to report to start his jail sentence.
He has to comply, as a condition for the extension of his bail, she warned.
Herman was in April found guilty of indecent assault, committed on the girl in his Tamboerskloof home between 2003 and early 2004. According to prosecutor Tillette Berry, there were several incidents, all of which were combined into one for the purposes of the prosecution.
In one of the incidents, Herman had made the girl rub lotion on his back and penis. In another, she had rubbed soap on his penis during a shower, and had also tied a length of cord around his penis while she and Herman played a ”dress-up game” in front of a mirror.
Van der Merwe said Herman had only admitted to allowing the girl to touch his penis, after she showed curiosity about male genitals.
The judge said a worrying aspect of the case was that Herman had shown no remorse.
Herman’s counsel, Dirk Uijs, conceded Herman’s actions had ”gone a bit too far”, but Van der Merwe rejected this as ”not a reasonable description of what had happened”.
She said the incidents had happened in Herman’s home, where he had been in a position of trust with children who had seen him as a father figure.
Should Herman’s appeal fail, Van der Merwe authorised the prison authorities to release Herman into house arrest, at their discretion, after he had served a portion of his sentence. — Sapa