THE brother and sister of the "Springs Monster" – an East Rand father who allegedly tortured his wife and five children whom he enslaved for more than a decade – are being questioned by police investigators.
An officer said of the father's siblings: "They are critical. Their information will show where they [the family] lived, how they stayed under the radar, how the children remained invisible and why no one ever reported this heinous crime."
The father is being held in custody, pending a bail hearing next week. He is facing charges of child abuse and assault with the intent to commit grievous bodily harm. His children and wife are now with relatives in safe houses.
The investigating officer, Warrant Officer Rudi Jansen, said no more arrests had been made.
"The case is sensitive. I cannot comment on who – like the mother or his siblings – may have known what or why people did nothing.
"Lots [of people] knew about this but did nothing. After the bail application the court will make a decision on certain things."
Gauteng police spokesman Colonel Lungelo Dlamini said: "We are following up on certain information. It is sensitive. We cannot provide more details."
As investigations intensify, a picture of the 36-year-old father, a used car salesman, is beginning to emerge. For years the man has allegedly led a clandestine existence, never settling in one place for long, keeping his children – two boys and three girls – chained up indoors and his wife constantly within sight.
Information from sources close to the investigation show that his children – aged 2, 4, 5, 11 and 16 – on paper apparently never existed, with their births allegedly unregistered and none ever enrolled at a creche, pre-school or school.
"From what we know on paper they were ghosts ... nameless and faceless," a police source said.
So intent was the father on hiding his children that he repeatedly moved them between rented houses across South Africa, spending several years at a time living in his brother's caravan on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast. Information indicates that the father, born in Springs, met and married his wife, now 35, when she was 19 years old.
Little of their lives together is known.
The age of their eldest daughter, 16, indicates that she was born within months of her parents marrying, apparently in Springs.
Five years later their first son was born. It was shortly after his birth that the family apparently fled their rented home, for unknown reasons.
It is believed they moved to the Free State, where they lived for several years before moving again.
The man's sister lives in the Free State town of Warden where the couple's 11-year-old son – who raised the alarm about his and his siblings' and mother's imprisonment and torture – was found on Friday. His father had allegedly taken him there to prevent him speaking to police.
Information the eldest child has provided to police shows she remembers living in a caravan.
"She has memories of a bakkie often towing the caravan which she, her mother and some of her siblings were forced to stay in.
"She remembers it being in KwaZulu-Natal but apart from that she does not know where. She remembers being blindfolded and sometimes tied up," a Springs child rights worker said.
She said the younger children had no recollection of where they had lived.
"Their existence was that of nomads ... no friends, no roots."
After leaving KwaZulu-Natal the family returned to Springs where they lived in a "normal house" in Paul Krugersoord.
"Compared to the house where the man was arrested, it is completely normal – not like the fortified home that the children and their mother were found in," a policeman said.
A tenant at the Springs home from where the siblings were freed said the father was cagey about his past.
"Everything about him was secret. I knew he had a wife, but saw her only briefly.
"She would smile a bit but never engage. I saw a girl once, but was told she was visiting and when I tried to say hello she was taken inside." - Graeme Hosken