A man who had hundreds of child pornography pictures stored on his computer has been given a 2 1/2 suspended sentence at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
John McDonnell (26) had 268 images of children in various forms of sexual abuse. The ages of the children in the pictures varied between six and 15 and over a dozen depicted children involved in full penetrative sex.
Gardaí were alerted after German police informed them that McDonnell’s IP address had been used to access child pornography sites.
Many of the images were stored under his user name in the “My Documents” folder. He had attempted to delete most of them but they could still be found on the computer.
McDonnell of Grosvenor Square, Rathmines used to work in an “editor type position” but resigned when charges were brought against him. It was not stated in court who he worked for. He is now again employed full-time in a media position.
Bernard Condon SC said his client first became interested in child sex images when he was 15 and he started hanging around with a group of “geeks”.
He pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography at his family home at Hyne Valley Way, Rathfarnham on November 24th, 2007.
Judge Tony Hunt said that McDonnell’s crime, which he described as “repulsive and repellent”, was not a victimless one.
“Young children, often not from this part of the world but from areas of poverty and without parental supervision and who are therefore vulnerable to exploitation, are the very real victims in this offence,” the judge said.
He accepted that McDonnell had never supplied or shared the images and a report from the Granada Institute stated that he had addressed his rehabilitation in “a positive and committed way”.
A report from the Probation Services said that McDonnell had developed an interest in child pornography during his teenage years when he had a lot of confusion in relation to sexual matters and concluded that he rehabilitated to such an extent that he did not require any further supervision.
The judge accepted that McDonnell developed an addiction and “it seemed was unable to stop himself investigating this type of material”.
Judge Hunt said he was satisfied that McDonnell did not pose a significant danger to children or society in general and was unlikely to re-offend.
He registered him as a sex offender before he suspended the entire sentence and noted that McDonnell had undertaken in open court to allow gardaí to search his home and his inspect his computer during the period of his three-year good behaviour bond.