Cape Town - The much-anticipated moment Moehydien Pangaker was given a chance to respond to the horrific allegations of sexual abuse against the very people he was supposed to protect left court attendees disappointed.
Appearing in the Western Cape High Court, Pangaker, 55, is facing 27 charges including the kidnapping, rape and murder of eight-year-old Tazne van Wyk, of Ravensmead; as well as child exploitation, indecent assault, sexual assault, common assault, incest, child grooming, intimidation, violating a corpse and absconding from monitoring while on parole.
Mumbling through his testimony, his lack of dentures clearly failed him in speech when he said “I’m getting a little tongue-tied” with a smile on his face as he was being questioned by his lawyer, advocate Saleem Halday.
Pangaker said he had been married twice and had eight children with different women but he couldn’t remember all their names. He said he worked in construction after he left school in Grade 8 and worked in security at a nightclub in 2016.
Going through each of his alleged offences, advocate Halday asked him about an incident where three witnesses all said that he attended a party which led to allegations of child exploitation.
Pangaker said: “They must have been bribed because I have no knowledge of that.”
Halday put it to him that the complainant, who was 10 years old at the time of the alleged offence, testified that he had taken her to his home instead of her own, offered the child money for sex, put his tongue in her mouth and played a pornographic DVD for her to watch.
“How can I offer her money if I never had any money? It’s not true. How can I kiss her if she doesn’t want me close to her? There wasn’t even a TV, how can I put on something you can’t see?” he said in response to each question, denying that he was confronted about the incident.
“I don’t know what they have against me but they have something against me,” Pangaker said.
Halday then asked him about the numerous allegations by a single complainant where he has been charged with 14 offences including rape, intimidation, sexual assault and common assault which allegedly happened from 2016 to 2019 while he stayed in Ladismith and later in Ravensmead.
For this, Pangaker stood up, kept his head down and simply replied “no” and “never”.