- A witness in a human trafficking trial broke down during a gruelling day of questioning.
- She alleged that she was in her early teens when taken to a house used as a brothel in Milnerton, Cape Town.
- The people on trial have pleaded not guilty to a slew of charges, including benefiting from the proceeds of prostitution and dealing in drugs.
A witness in a human trafficking trial broke down in the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday after she was accused of never having been in the alleged Brooklyn brothel in Cape Town she was testifying on.
"I can't take it," she said, putting her hands over her face.
"I am the one who was traumatised. I was the one that lost their future," she said.
"I have even lost the dignity of my body," she said as she got up and tried to push the door to the witness stand open.
She struggled to open the door, which was shut firmly with an old-fashioned brass knob.
The isiXhosa interpreter, doubling as her emotional support and passing her tissues, opened the door for her, and she sobbed as she made her way out of the court.
The State had submitted that the woman, who cannot be named, was only in her early teens when she went by bus from East London to Brooklyn, a bustling suburb in Milnerton, Cape Town, to work at the house.
She said she spent two months at the house before escaping with the help of a relative.
Two men and a woman have pleaded not guilty to multiple charges linked to human trafficking.
The accused, Edward Tambe Ayuk and his wife Leandra Williams Ayuk from Springbok in the Northern Cape, and Yannick Agbor Ayuk (Edward's brother), have also pleaded not guilty to charges of debt bondage, using the services of a victim of trafficking, living on the earnings of prostitution, assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm, violation of the Children's Act, multiple counts of rape, kidnapping, and dealing in drugs.
The defence took the witness to task for apparent discrepancies in the layout of the house she said she was kept in, with a long time devoted to whether there was a latch on the outside door of their room, as she had alleged.
The previous witness testified that they were locked in their room and only allowed out for sex work.
It emerged via the defence on Tuesday that there was no latch, but that the door was opened and closed by wedging a teaspoon into the door opening mechanism.
The witness, who is now 18, said she never concentrated on what was around her or whether she had to go to the kitchen to fetch a spoon to open and close the door.
Defence lawyer Bashir Sibda added several other details about the house that she did not appear to be aware of, and said he would argue that her lack of knowledge of this showed she was not at the house.
"My clients will argue that they don't know you from a bar of soap," he said.
He said there was a small shop, a family in the yard, and that half of the house was partitioned for rental, which she did not seem to know about, and she had left out some furniture when she was asked to describe the room she stayed in.
"It is because I was only concerned about this house that I was staying in," she responded.
She said that when she was at the house in 2017, there was only a cupboard for clothes and a double bed.
He also questioned her evidence on who took her to the house when she arrived with another woman on the bus from the Eastern Cape.
She said in her statement that when she got to the house, she was given something to smoke by one of the accused.
"I felt dizzy. And then I felt paranoid," she testified on what happened when she smoked the drug.
The court heard that she got out of the house in 2017, and in 2019, the police arrived at her mother's house to ask her questions about the house.
Sibda accused her of giving testimony different to what she told the police.
At that point, she became extremely agitated and walked out of the court crying.
After a short adjournment, the trial was postponed to Wednesday, when the cross examination will continue.