The Knysna Regional Court on Wednesday heard that the Plettenberg Bay man, who pleaded guilty to about 19,000 child pornography charges, was at risk of re-offending.
The sentencing procedures against William Beale, 39, continued in his the more than a two-and-a-half-year-long court battle.
The computer engineer was arrested in January 2015, at his seaside home and became the first South African arrested as part of Operation Cloud 9. The operation involved joint efforts by South African and Belgian police responsible for cracking down on an international child pornography ring linked to a cyber meeting space for paedophiles.
Some of the images found included the torture and murder of babies as young as only a few days old. He pleaded guilty in February. Subsequent to his arrest, Beale was released on R10,000 bail and relocated to Kimberley to live with his brother.
On Wednesday, Prosecutor Gerda Marx cross-examined defence expert witness, clinical psychologist Tjaart van der Walt, and focused on his testimony that Beale was a low risk of re-offending. Marx said she found it hard to believe as, by Van der Walt’s own testimony, Beale had four of the five risk factors.
These include anti-social traits, deviant sexual interests, criminal history and substance abuse. The only factor, not present was a history of contact sexual crime. Van der Walt was adamant that despite these factors, Beale was still a low risk of re-offending. He said that the risk was between zero percent and about 7.5 percent.
Marx also questioned Van der Walt’s reference in his psychological report of Beale. She argued that many of these references were not peer-reviewed articles and even included a reference to a blog and statistics compiled by organisations outside of South Africa.
Van der Walt said that these should not be seen in isolation, but as corroboration of academic literature which he also quoted. He added that his findings were based on a range of evidence including consultations with Beale, his family, academic literature and tests he performed on Beale.
The matter was postponed to Friday.
– African News Agency (ANA)
