15 years’ jail for child porn images

The Plettenberg Bay computer engineer who pleaded guilty to 18 644 counts of possession of child pornography was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment by the Thembalethu Regional Court in George yesterday.

William Beale, 39, appeared in court for a final time since his high-profile arrest in Plettenberg Bay almost three years ago.

During sentencing, Magistrate Eugenia Jacobs described the images as depicting the most horrific acts imaginable. She said after taking all sentencing options into consideration, she concluded that anything other than imprisonment would be in total disregard of the seriousness of the offence.

“This sentence should send a clear message to the public that these crimes are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Imprisonment will deter the accused from repeating similar crimes and also deter others from committing such offences,” Jacobs said.

She said that she believed Beale was a danger to society and the fact that he did not commit a contact crime was irrelevant. “With every click of a button on the internet [involving child pornography], a child”s rights are being infringed,” she added.

Beale was the first South African to be arrested in what has become known as Operation Cloud 9. The operation involves cooperation between Belgian and South African authorities in an attempt to clamp down on an international child pornography network.

Following Beale’s arrest, police found thousands of images and videos of children — some only a few days old — being raped, tortured and murdered. They found the internet addresses of about 300 other alleged paedophiles and have since arrested several others.

Yesterday, Lieutenant-Colonel Heila Niemand, from the Gauteng family violence and sexual offences unit, who led the investigation in SA, said the sentence was the harshest yet been handed down in a child pornography possession case in SA.

This was confirmed by Women and Men Against Child Abuse director Miranda Jordan-Friedmann, who said she was especially impressed that Jacobs indicated the viewing of child pornography was not a victimless crime and that for each viewed image a child had endured horrific abuse.

Beale was also sentenced to a R500 fine or 30 days behind bars for the possession of dagga, found on him during his arrest. – ANA