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Cape Town paedophile loses bid to appeal 8-year prison sentence

Cape Town - A convicted paedophile’s application for leave to appeal his eight-year prison sentence has been dismissed in the Supreme Court.

Child sex offender Andries Retief's application was turned down as there were no special circumstances meriting a further appeal.

"This should thwart any further efforts by [Retief] to avoid spending time in jail," National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Eric Ntabazalila said on Tuesday.

Retief was convicted on 2 130 charges two years ago and was handed a sentence of eight-year prison sentence, wholly suspended for five years.

The State in July successfully overturned the sentence against Retief in the Western Cape High Court, and he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, of which two years were conditionally suspended.

Retief was served with a notice to start his sentence, but his lawyers applied for an urgent bail appeal, pending his appeal against the overturned sentence in the Supreme Court, Ntabazalila said.

Advocate Evadne Kortje argued that the paedophile had already been convicted and sentenced, and that some of the parents of the victims had expressed concern.

She said the accused was "delaying the inevitable".

Retief's bail appeal was denied and his legal representatives applied for leave to appeal "that few minutes-old decision" of the High Court, Ntabazalila said.

The State again opposed this, and the judges again ruled in favour of the prosecution.

The father of two from Durbanville, who was arrested in January 2011 when a house sitter came across his self-made child porn collection, pleaded guilty to the charges in the Parow Regional Court in 2015.

Retief was found in possession of a vast number of child abuse images that he had collected over 10 years. Among his victims were children as young as six, eight and nine years old, who were abused while they slept.

He used a cellphone, video recorder and camera to create material of him abusing the children of his friends and neighbours.

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