An Athlone man has allegedly been exploiting desperate women looking for work on Gumtree.
The man’s wife, who did not want to be named, said her husband spent over half a year answering women’s requests for domestic work and takes advantage of them by either demanding sex or paying them for sex.
When the Daily Voice contacted one of his alleged victims, she said he answered her advert on Gumtree in January and offered her a job.
She says he duped her into having sex with him.
“He messaged me to say that he has work for me and he wanted to meet at a place but I told him I did not have transport.
“So he came to fetch me and took me to his house in Athlone where he offered me money to have sex, we did it (have sex) because I need the money but he did not pay me because he said he did not have any on him.”
She says they texted each other over the next few days and he kept trying to hook up again, while giving excuses for not paying her.
“I did not want to see him again and when the wife contacted me in February, I just stopped talking to him. I just want this thing to be done and it must go away.”
The wife says she started growing suspicious when she found tablets for treating STDs in his cabinet but “the s*** really hit the fan” when she discovered his online activity.
“I noticed that he often uses our son’s tablet so when I checked his search history, I saw that there were pages of ads for domestic workers which I thought were very strange.”
The mother, who has been separated from her husband since January, and is in the process of a divorce, says she got the women’s contact details on Gumtree and contacted them via WhatsApp.
“I started sending them messages acting like him and even using his profile pic.
“A few of them replied to ask for money. When I questioned them, I learnt that he was paying them for sex.
“If he wanted prostitutes, then why didn't he just go get one? I mean why must he take advantage of these women who I found out are from ZImbabwe and Malawi?”
The Daily Voice were shown screenshots of messages she sent to the women, as well as their adverts on her son’s tablet.
The Daily Voice tried contacting the alleged sex pest for a week but he refused to respond, while his wife says she no longer knows his whereabouts.