PLETTENBERG BAY, April 18 (ANA) – The Plettenberg Bay man who pleaded guilty to more than 18,000 charges of possession of child pornography earlier this year, will have to wait another two months to hear is fate.
William Beale, 38, appeared in the Knysna Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, for sentencing but the case was postponed to June 30.
The defence requested to make additions to the psychologist report for sentencing purposes. In February this year Beale, who was linked to a horrific international baby pornography network, entered into a plea agreement which saw him plead guilty to 18,644 charges of possession of child pornography and a single charge of possession of dagga.
This, more than two years after his high-profile arrest by international police during a raid of his seaside home on January 13, 2015.
Beale, a Plett computer engineer, was the first South African to have been arrested as part of Operation Cloud 9.
The operation involved cooperation between South African and Belgian police responsible for cracking down on a child pornography ring linked to a cyber meeting space for paedophiles whose fetishes seem to be the sexual abuse of babies.
Some of the images included the torture and murder of babies only a few days old.
When Beale was arrested police found sections of files containing thousands of videos and violent assaults as well as the internet address of more than 300 alleged paedophiles.
Woman and Men Against Child Abuse (WMACA) Western Cape spokesman Joanne Barrett said she was relieved that after more than two “hugely frustrating” years and “countless” postponements later, Beale would be sentenced on June 30.
“We trust that the sentence reflect the seriousness of the offence. These images are of actual rape, torture and sexual abuse of children. The sentences in these cases must punish all who view, manufacture or distribute these images. Every image is a crime scene,” Barrett said.
– African News Agency (ANA)
