Plettenberg Bay computer engineer, William Beale, has been jailed for 15 years after he earlier pleaded guilty to more than 18 000 child pornography charges.
Beale (39) was sentenced in the Thembalethu Regional Court in George on Tuesday, nearly three years after his high-profile arrest in January 2015.
He was also reportedly the first South African to have been arrested as part of Operation Cloud 9, an international operation involving South African and Belgian police probing a global child porn network.
At the time of Beale's arrest, police found computer files containing thousands of videos of violent assaults and the internet details of more than 300 suspected paedophiles.
Welcoming Beale's sentence was the lobby group, Women and Men Against Child Abuse, WMACA.
In a statement, WMACA said that "due to the sheer volume of child sexual abuse images, it took three years for William Beale to be sentenced on 18 644 charges of possession of child pornography."
"But, today Magistrate Eugenia Jacobs delivered the heaviest sentence seen to date in South Africa for the possession of child pornography, as Beale was handed down 15 years imprisonment, the maximum sentence allowed a regional court," WMACA said.
The organisation said sentencing Beale, Magistrate Jacobs acknowledged the seriousness of the crimes depicted in the thousands of images.
WMACA said that Magistrate Jacobs pointed out that there had been an increase in both the number of these cases as well as the number of sexual violence cases before the courts and that a strong message needed to be sent out.
Beale was also sentenced to a fine of R500 or R30 days in prison for being in possession of dagga.
Meanwhile, the police officer central to the investigation, Lieutenant-Colonel Heila Niemand, said while the Beale chapter has closed, more than a dozen cases linked to the Cloud Nine investigation, still loom.
But, for now, Niemand of the national Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit, said she was ecstatic about Tuesday's sentencing.
" We are very relieved as well as excited because getting a 15-year direct imprisonment sentence sends a strong message out to South Africa and any future offender," she said.
Colonel Niemand said that there are a further 14 suspects behind bars on similar charges adding that the investigation was still continuing.
"I don't think it will ever end because as soon as we arrest one, out that arrest, we identify more perpetrators," she said.
