In trial testimony that can be seen as a big boost to the Ministry of Home Affairs’ push for tougher child porn penalties and regulations over Internet service providers, the deputy chief of the country’s Film and Publications Board told a trial court 99 percent of child porn images come from Internet downloading.
Iyavar Chetty reportedly testified for the state in its bid to increase the sentence of former high school teacher William Creasey, who was convicted in September to charges of indecent assault, child porn possession, and violating the Film and Publications Act.
Reports in the South African press said Chetty told the court about children traumatized through abuse by porn, which he said cost them self-esteem and created anti-social and emotional problems for them, often over a lifetime because the children could not deal with trauma at the time of their exposure.
Creasey was believed to have had the largest known single collection of child porn in South Africa when he was arrested. Chetty told the court child porn could be used both for sexual arousal and blackmail as well as helping a pedophile justify his actions because the Internet affords contact with millions like him.
Also testifying during the court session was a woman who once agreed to let Creasey live with her if released under legal supervision. But prosecutors reportedly showed the woman a letter Creasey wrote to a teen boy saying he loved the boy and not the woman, who seemed unaware of Creasey’s true intent. Creasey also reportedly described the woman as a known child abuser herself, but the woman reportedly answered that she believed he wrote that in anger.
Creasey himself testified and said that he got the message about child porn while in Pollsmoor Prison during his thirteen-month trial. Children, he said, would be “100 percent safe due to the nightmare of hell that Pollsmoor Prison has been to me,” he was quoted as having testified. "I have seen six people die - they were burned in a fire in a cell, and I actually saw the flames. One prisoner died in front of me."
