Update
PLETTENBERG BAY NEWS - The criminal case against the Plettenberg Bay computer engineer – who pleaded guilty to just short of 19 000 counts of possession of child pornography – came one step closer to completion on Monday when the state and defence presented their final arguments in the Thembalethu Regional Court in George.
Beale was the first South African to have been arrested as part of Operation Cloud 9 which involved cooperation between South African and Belgian police.
The operation was responsible for cracking down on an international 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 found included the torture and murder of babies as young as only a few days old.
When Beale was arrested at his seaside home in January 2015 police found sections of files containing thousands of videos and violent assaults as well internet address of more than 300 alleged paedophiles.
