Middleton bail hearing delayed yet again

DAVE Middleton is still behind bars. For now.

The former senior Hibiscus Coast Protection Services officer appeared in the Port Shepstone Regional Court yesterday, where his defence council again attempted to secure bail.

He faces numerous charges, including rape, sexual assault and intimidation.

Middleton has already failed on three occasions to get bail.

His attorney, Jimmy Howse from Xolile Ntshulana Attorneys, gave the court a summary of the facts and sketched the background as to how the charges against Middleton came about.

He said Middleton was not a flight risk as he had “a responsible job”, ran various businesses and employed numerous people.

He said he was confident that if Middleton was granted bail, he would attend trial. He suggested that appropriate bail conditions would eliminate any prospect of contact or communication between Middleton and the children.

The State insisted that there were no new facts brought forward, and the merits therefore, were for trial only.

Magistrate Kwazi Shandu postponed the case to Wednesday, April 2, to give council time to get the transcript of the judgment of the bail appeal heard at the Pietermaritzburg High Court.

Attorney Howse submitted that there were an “abundance of new facts”, which were made clear in Middleton’s affidavit.

He pointed out that it was the mother of the first ‘victim’ who had been instrumental in getting Middleton charged.

He explained that the mother of the child claimed that Middleton had given her his cellphone in early August, and that she had looked at the contents of the phone.

She saw photographs of a girl, including nude photographs, which she then sent to her own phone.

Attorney Howse said the mother did not discuss this with her daughter, but instead went to the police with the photographs, days later.

Attorney Howse said the child’s statement, which was only taken the following month, was not made under oath, was translated from Afrikaans to English by her mother, and the person taking the statement only gave a name and a stamp.

He said that when the child was taken to the doctor, “nothing was found” (in terms of a sexual nature).

Attorney Howse said, on the strength of this, Middleton was arrested in early September. He explained that, at the time of the arrest, no statement was taken from the second victim. “The arrest was only based on the first child’s statement,” he said.

He also bought it to the court’s attention that the victim’s mother had lied to the police when Middleton evaded arrest at a shopping mall in Margate. He pointed out that in her statement, she said she had lied to police, saying “I started all of this”.

Attorney Howse said that when the second child was first asked by her mother regarding the allegations, she had told her mother that she had posed naked for photographs taken my the first victim’s mother.

Attorney Howse said that only after she was interviewed by police and told “to tell the truth” that she gave evidence implicating Middleton.

Further, he said the doctor said there were “no positive clinical findings”.

“Neither of these children indicated any degree of violence or threat directed specifically at them,” he said.