Child pornographer’s jail term doubled
The Pretoria High Court has doubled the prison term of a man convicted on 482 charges of possessing explicit child pornography images on his computer.
A former city council employee was jailed for 10 years in Pretoria this week for possessing child pornography “depicting absolute depravity”.
Gerhardus Johannes Alberts in 2012 pleaded guilty in the Pretoria Regional Court to 482 charges of possession of child pornography.
He was sentenced to five years imprisonment.
However, the State successfully appealed against the “light sentence” and the High Court on Thursday doubled the pornographer’s prison term.
It was also ordered that his name be recorded in the Register of Sex Offenders.
Sentencing Alberts, two Pretoria High Court judges criticised the sometimes lenient punishment received by those convicted of possessing child pornography.
At times, this almost seemed like a “slap on the wrist” they said.
The 43-year old Alberts, who claimed to be a collector of art, had a preference for images
of children aged between nine and 12.
However, according to the court, some of the photographs he possessed depicted quite a few children under that age, including an estimated two-year-old being raped.
He preferred that the children being sexually abused seemed “happy” in the photographs.
“Having viewed the images which Alberts was accused of possessing, those images can
only be described as depicting absolute depravity,” Judge Selby Baqwa said.
“A number of them depict very young children being raped in different positions. The depictions in themselves are outrageous in the extreme.”
Alberts had been collecting child pornography for many years – since he had left the army after
military service until the day of his arrest.
He said his interest in child pornography had begun when he viewed nude pictures of children on an artwork site on the internet.
His collection of images was made online and he did not have direct contact with the children nor did he take the photographs himself.
Alberts had used a false name and address to mask his identity when ordering the pornography online which, according to Baqwa, indicated a lot of planning.
He said Alberts, at the time of his arrest by an under-cover policeman, was in the process of “ordering” child pornography to be created to his specifications, which would of necessity had involved the further sexual abuse of children.
“According to the emails in his possession, his interest was also anal, animal, girl and girl, man on girl, boy/girl, feisty and incest and that the children must look happy,” the court found.
“Alberts was cross-examined on these preferences and at no stage denied this,” it was ruled.
Baqwa, with judge E Kubushi concurring, found that the Regional Court had misdirected
itself by not giving sufficient weight to the aggravating factors in the Alberts case.
“Taking into account the nature of the offence, its impact on the 481 victims and their families and the level of depravity of the underlying crimes further perpetrated by the continued publication of the images, the regional court had erred,” Baqwa ruled.
He further found that the crimes committed on the minor children could not only be described as disgusting and degrading but, as testified by experts, their youth had been taken away and their future tarnished.
Baqwa said that there seemed to be a chasm between the public outrage over these type of offences and the manner in which the courts articulated that outrage when sentences were meted out.
“In my view the court, as the upper guardian of minor children ought not to be hesitant in protecting the interests of one of the most vulnerable groups in our society,” the judge said.
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