Former teacher to be sentenced for child porn possession

A former teacher and table tennis coach is to be sentenced next week for possession of child pornography.

John O’Donoghue pleaded guilty earlier this year to a single count of possessing the pornographic material at his former home in Weaver’s Hall, Stepaside, Dublin 18, on March 27th, 2012.

In Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Friday, Garda Brian Davoren told Antonia Boyle BL, prosecuting, that gardaí­ searched the premises on foot of confidential information received in 2008.

They retrieved a total of 2,500 images and 13 movie files of child pornography, contained on a computer, laptop, memory stick and two external hard drives.

The court heard that 496 of the images displayed children involved in explicit sexual activity, and were described as Category 1, or the worst on the scale of seriousness of child pornography.

A further 2,048 of the images showed a child with their genital region exposed and were described as Category 2 on the scale of seriousness.

Garda Davoren said the Computer Crime Investigation Unit of Ireland uses nine categories as a guideline scale for the seriousness of pornographic offences, one to five of which deal with child pornography.

Explicit

Of the 13 movie files retrieved, two contained explicit sexual activity involving children, while 11 featured a child with their genital region exposed.

O’Donoghue, with an address at Leinster Square, Rathmines, has four previous convictions for indecent assault of a young boy in 2013, for which he received a 3½ year sentence with the final 18 months suspended.

The court heard that when O’Donoghue was arrested in December 2016 and shown the computers seized from his former home, he said, “It’s not my PC.”

When told about the images discovered by gardaí, O’Donoghue said he “wasn’t aware” that they were on his equipment and added: “Look, I find this to be disgusting and I do not look at child pornography. The fact that children may have been hurt in making these, I am seriously upset about that.”

Mary Rose Gearty SC, defending, said that through nobody’s fault, there had been a systemic delay in bringing this case to court, but that in the interim, O’Donoghue had taken significant steps to rehabilitate himself.

“The man being sentenced today is not the man arrested in 2012, because he has since pleaded guilty, served a sentence and completed a Safer Lives programme on his release from prison. He is a different person,” said Ms Gearty.

She said he had resigned his job as a teacher “for obvious reasons” and had engaged in individual and group therapy.

She said O’Donoghue’s social life had revolved around table tennis, but that he had given up coaching the sport so as not to be around young people.

Judge Patricia Ryan adjourned the case for sentencing to November 10th, saying she would require time to read a number of detailed reports submitted to the court by the defence.