Former US lawyer sentenced to two years and nine months for child pornography

A former US lawyer, who admitted possessing 646 images of child pornography, has been told by a judge that the material was “despicable, repulsive and offensive”.

Gerard Gilligan (61), who had images of children under 12 – including babies – involved in sexual acts, has been sentenced to two years and nine months in prison, with nine months suspended, by Judge Keenan Johnson at Sligo Circuit Court.

Gilligan admitted having the material at his residence at Union Place Sligo on March 1st, 2009.

Sentencing the accused, Judge Johnson said one startling piece of evidence which emerged during the case was that there was 12 million hits from 145,000 IP addresses in 170 countries on the site accessed by the accused.

The judge said it was “absolutely frightening” when one considered that this was just one child porn site, that there was such a proliferation of this material available for downloading . “Steps should be taken to make this stuff much more difficult to access,” he said.

The judge told the accused that while possession of such images for personal use was not as serious as having them for distribution or sale , it was “not a victimless crime”.

Without demand for child porn, there would be very little incentive to produce such images, he said. “The relationship between the producers and the consumers of such material is like that between receivers and thieves.”

A probation report suggested that Gilligan was at a high risk of re-offending, the court heard.

Judge Johnson said the accused fully accepted that he was supporting the abuse of children when he deliberately downloaded and printed the images which gardaí found. The investigation was sparked following an Interpol probe in Croatia, the court heard.

The accused who has Irish relatives, had in 2000 been convicted of aggravated sexual assault in the US where had been given a three-year sentence. After moving to Sligo, he was placed on the Irish sex offenders’ register in 2007.

Detective Julie Coyne had told an earlier sitting that she uncovered the images in a bin, a white plastic bag and in bedroom drawers, at Gilligan’s residence.

“They were of children aged 12 and under, some of them involving babies. They were particularly offensive and distressing,” she said.

Defence counsel Michael Bowman had told the court that twice-married Gilligan was an alcoholic “incapable of managing certain urges”.

Mr Bowman added that Gilligan had been upfront in facing his difficulty. “It’s an illness for which he recognises he needs and seeks treatment.”

Judge Johnson that it was inexcusable that the accused had gone back to the US in the course of the Garda investigation. But he said he the accused had returned voluntarily to face the charges.

Mitigating factors were the fact that the accused had empathy for the child victims and was “full of remorse,” said the Judge.

The probation report showed that the accused had a tragic life, he added. He had himself been a victim of sex abuse as a child. He had lost his career as a lawyer, but he had taken steps to deal with his alcoholism and was in AA. He pointed out that Gilligan was in poor health

He was now “ostracised” by his family. Judge Johnson said that given the early plea he was suspending nine months of the sentence. He backdated the sentence to May 1st last to allow for time already spent in custody. Judge Johnson ordered that all the images be destroyed.