WATCH | Gerhard Ackerman complains ‘prison is bad’ and protests innocence

The Johannesburg high court has postponed a verdict against 52-year-old Gerhard Ackerman, accused of running a child sex ring.  

Judge Ismail Mahomed, who wasn’t feeling well, postponed the verdict to Monday.

“I don't want to be speaking here and my voice starts cracking,” he said. 

He said the “lengthy” judgment had already been written and he has to read everything out to the accused.

Before the proceedings started on Wednesday, Ackerman told journalists who were taking pictures of him that “it is a crazy world”.

“What if I was your son? Do I deserve to go to prison? I did not do anything wrong. What did I do wrong? Tell me,” he said. 

He told journalists they didn’t understand how bad prison is. “You have no idea, the judge has no idea, the prosecutors have no idea. Go there for a week, they will realise what is it [that] they are doing to people.”

Ackerman said he had never been a molester and he has never done anything wrong to anybody. He pleaded not guilty to more than 700 charges, including rape, human trafficking, distribution of child pornography and sexual assault.

He also faces a charge of attempted murder for allegedly exposing youths to a client he knew was HIV-positive — his co-accused, advocate and acting judge Paul Kennedy, who died from an apparent suicide in February last year while on bail. 

Ackerman said the masseuses knew Kennedy was HIV-positive.  

“Handing over, they knew he was HIV-positive. They were fine with it. They didn’t go there to have sex with him, they went there to massage him. And I told them not to do anything sexually [as] he is HIV-positive,” he said, before his attorney told him to stop talking.  

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