- A Gauteng man has pleaded guilty to more than 180 child pornography-related charges.
- It emerged in the Gauteng High Court that most of the images featured boys and incestuous material.
- The man said images piqued his interest and curiosity.
A 69-year-old man who pleaded guilty to more than 180 child pornography-related charges told the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg this week that the images piqued his interest and curiosity, but that he was never aroused by them.
Kevin George Edwin Mulligan was testifying on Tuesday in mitigation of his sentence, after he pleaded guilty to 186 counts of possession of child pornography and one count of distributing child pornography.
It emerged in court that Mulligan's desktop computer had 6 830 child pornographic images and videos stored on it, which mainly featured boys and incestuous material.
When State advocate Elize le Roux questioned him, he denied that he preferred young boys.
He testified:
He said he was never aroused by the pictures and videos, and added that he saw them as shocking images that piqued his interest and curiosity.
Le Roux put it to him that she found it impossible to believe that he was never aroused over the years that he spent watching child pornography.
"The time spent and the number of pictures you had access to is a predisposition that you are sexually attracted to children," Le Roux said.
She asked him if he ever felt his actions were wrong and if he knew he had been diagnosed with paedophilia.
He responded that he was not aware that it was wrong and added that being labelled a paedophile was horrifying to him.
He asked:
He added that he refused to accept it.
"This would probably be why I never sought help and put everything on the backburner," he said.
Testifying on behalf of the State in aggravation of Mulligan's sentence, clinical psychologist Kirsten Clark told the court the accused used GigaTribe, a peer-to-peer file-sharing network, to share pictures and videos with other paedophiles who were members of a child pornography network under the username "Poor Smith".
Clark told the court that the size of the material that was discovered demonstrated the time and effort Mulligan had invested.
The case continues.
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