A judge handed down a 20-year sentence against a Sautee man who possessed thousands of child pornography images. A sentencing hearing was held Monday in White County Superior Court after Wilson Franklin Beavers pled guilty to child exploitation.
Enotah Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney Kelly Holloway argued for a lengthy prison sentence. Holloway presented evidence that the case not only involved specific pornographic images named in the indictment but also thousands of other explicit images.
Some of the images appeared to be children younger than 10 to 12 years of age, prosecutors said.
The DA’s office said none of the children involved were known to be local to North Georgia.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested the now 64-year-old Beavers in September 2020.
Superior Court Judge Buckley Levins sentenced Beavers to 20 years, with the first 15 in state prison. Upon his release, Beavers will be under special supervision. He is banned from having contact with children under the age of eighteen and cannot live in any location where minors congregate. He also is subject to a Fourth Amendment waiver which includes unannounced inspections of his computer and all electronic devices.
The judge also ordered Beavers to undergo mandatory mental health and sex offender treatment and ordered him to be placed on the sex offender registry.
“My office prosecutes these types of cases aggressively because the possession and distribution of this type of material causes and encourages the abuse and trafficking of children worldwide,” said Enotah Circuit District Attorney Jeff Langley at the conclusion of Monday’s hearing.
He warned that “anyone collecting these types of images is considered a potential threat to harm local children.”
Langley thanked GBI Special Agent Kelly Aldrich and Assistant District Attorney Kelly Holloway for their hard work investigating and successfully prosecuting the case.
