Suspended sentence for 'remorseful' former Durban cop bust for child porn

29 October 2019 - 17:50 By Tania Broughton
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A former policeman and salesman who pleaded guilty to creating child porn was given a suspended sentence in the Durban regional court on Tuesday. Stock image.
A former policeman and salesman who pleaded guilty to creating child porn was given a suspended sentence in the Durban regional court on Tuesday. Stock image.
Image: 123rf.com/canjoena

A Durban salesman and former police officer admitted on Tuesday to possessing and creating child pornography, saying he was deeply depressed at the time and had turned to a “dark place” to escape from the real world.

“I got drawn into this alternative world and became so taken by it, I lost all sense of morality,” said Greg Bower, 56, in a guilty plea before Durban regional court magistrate Melanie de Jager.

He said he was deeply ashamed of his behaviour.

Bower, who was stationed at Durban North and Point police stations between 1981 and 1997, said he slipped into depression after his business went into liquidation and he was subsequently retrenched from a sales position.

He said he began chatting to between 15 and 20 random strangers online, “regardless of sex and age”.

Some of them had sent him the 74 images that he downloaded between 2014 and 2018, thus committing the crime of “creating” child pornography.

He said it was possible that one of the people he had engaged with was British national Stephen Butler. According to UK media reports, Butler is a former taxi driver who according to police informants was posing as a young girl in order to get men to perform sex acts online. When police swooped on his home last year, they found “a stash of indecent images of children as young as eight or nine”.

Butler, like Bower, was said to be a first-time offender. He had been unemployed for four years and was depressed after the death of two of his friends.

He was given a non-custodial sentence.

It was Butler's arrest that led police to Bower, after they discovered the chats between the two.

According to a social worker's report submitted to the court, Bower’s friends and family described him as a humble and disciplined man.

He told the social worker that the web chats had started to consume him and were affecting his work and family, but it took years before he realised that he was “addicted”.

His attorney, Sunil Singh, said he had taken full responsibility for what he had done and had started going to therapy. He had also signed up for another three months with a “sobriety lifestyle” coach.

"He has not been online since his arrest," said Singh. "He realised that he needed to get back on the straight and narrow."

De Jager said child pornography was a universally condemned evil. She said while it was not uncommon for an accused person to plead guilty “if there are no other options”, she believed Bower had shown genuine remorse and had accepted his criminality.

She sentenced him to a five-year suspended sentence and three years of correctional supervision, during which he will be under house arrest, do community service and complete a programme for sexual offenders.

She also ordered that his name be listed on the national register of sex offenders.


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