Plett engineer gets 15 years for owning child porn

The Plettenberg Bay computer engineer, who pleaded guilty to 18 644 counts of possession of child pornography, was yesterday sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment by the Thembalethu Regional Court in George. A report on the IoL site notes that William Beale appeared in court for a final time, since his high-profile arrest in Plettenberg Bay almost three years ago. During sentencing Magistrate Eugenia Jacobs said that she believed Beale was a danger to society and the fact that he did not commit a contact crime was ‘irrelevant’. Lieutenant-Colonel Heila Niemand from the Gauteng family violence and sexual offences unit, who led the investigation, said that the sentence was the harshest handed down in a child pornography possession case in SA.