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Just hours before Pastor Timothy Omotoso heads to the Port Elizabeth High Court to have another crack at getting out of jail, two women regarded as his “recruiters” have been nabbed in a night-time arrest by the Hawks.
Rumours of the arrests, which took place on Tuesday night, have been circulating among the Port Elizabeth communities close to the Omotoso scandal for a while now.
For months, information that the next step in the case would be to arrest the ring of women around the “man of God”, known as his recruiters, made local news, but no arrests happened until Tuesday night.
The identities of both women are known to the City Press, but they cannot be named before they have made their official appearances and pleaded in the Port Elizabeth Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday morning.
The first woman, his Port Elizabeth-based 28-year-old “chief recruiter”, gave birth to a baby about a week ago.
The second woman, a Durban-based woman in her early 30s, is reportedly seven months pregnant and is the one who “kept” the girls in Omotoso’s Durban house.
Both women are married to men close to Omotoso.
The women allegedly recruited girls for Omotoso’s “pleasure”.
Concurrent to their first appearance in the lower court tomorrow, will be Omotoso’s first appearance in the Port Elizabeth High Court. He will be appealing his bail application, which was denied on two separate occasions in the magistrates’ court.
During Omotoso’s first bail application, chief investigating officer Peter Plaatjies testified that the clergyman allegedly used the modus operandi of a skilled sexual predator to lure young girls and later abuse them.
Omotoso is facing various sexual offence charges, including human trafficking and rape.
His appearances at the Port Elizabeth Magistrates’ Court have been marked by a tussle between two huge crowds of supporters – those who insist he is innocent and those who believe he is guilty and should not be granted bail.
Affidavits presented as evidence before court characterised Omotoso as being the kingpin of a sex ring involving mostly unsuspecting girls, some as young as 13.
“He has a set of older girls who identify and recruit young girls ... to join his circle of sexual entertainers,” said Plaatjies.
The role of the recruiters was described as that of identifying young girls who visit the church for crusades and ordinary church services,” he said.
Plaatjies drew a depressing picture of how the alleged recruiters went into their communities to find vulnerable girls from homes without father figures.
He said an individual interview process was then embarked upon, which sought to vet each girl for information about her family background.
“His first interest area is to ensure that these girls have no male family members who will come looking for them,” he said.
“Ideally, they should come from poor homes, where money is needed for survival.”
He said the girls were then paraded, and those who fitted the desired profile were given tickets to travel to Durban, where Omotoso was based, to meet him.
“They are enticed with money because they are poor and need money.”
Plaatjies said the girls would undergo a transformation process, which involved a complete makeover that turned them into absolute beauties.
He said the girls were given large amounts of money. These transactions were made either in cash or through money transfer services from shops such as Shoprite.
“The girls are kept in the same house and the same room(s) in his house, and in his mission houses in Durban. One by one they are called into a dark room, where Omotoso makes sexual advances on them.”
The Hawks have confirmed the two arrests.
Captain Anelisa Feni said the two women were arrested on Tuesday by the Port Elizabeth Hawks’ “trafficking in persons” unit.
“It is alleged that the suspects recruited girls all over the country and monitored their movements in the houses where they were being kept. Investigations with regards to this case are continuing and more arrests will be made,” said Feni.
