A sex trafficker has been handed three life sentences in connection with the exploitation of a 12-year-old girl.

Augustine Obono, aged 44, has also been handed a three-year sentence for kidnapping and seven years for keeping a brothel.

He had faced charges of human trafficking, rape, statutory rape and the sexual exploitation of a child in the North Gauteng High Court.

In September 2016, the young girl met a woman at a park in Derdepoort while having a picnic with her friends.

The woman asked the child to accompany her to a flat in Sunnyside in Pretoria.

When they arrived there, the girl was handed to Obono for sexual exploitation.

Obono kept the minor in the flat, fed her drugs and forced her to have sex with five to six men a day.

In December 2016, the child managed to escape and made her way to her uncle’s house in Mamelodi.

Police were alerted and the minor pointed out where she was enslaved for three months.