A 57-year-old Dutchman has been given a two-year suspended prison sentence at Cork Circuit Criminal Court for possessing over 11,000 computer images of child pornography. They were uncovered by gardaí in a raid on his home in Co Cork as part of Operation Amethyst.
Francis Daams from School Road, Durrus, Co Cork, had pleaded guilty in November 2004 to possessing the images on his computer on May 27th, 2002, but the case had been adjourned on numerous occasions to see if he abided by certain undertakings he had given in court.
During an earlier hearing, Judge Patrick Moran had been told by Det Sgt Gerry McCarthy that gardaí had raided Daams's house when they received information from Interpol about a US company offering child pornography to credit card subscribers.
Daams told yesterday's hearing that he had abided by his earlier undertakings and had not accessed the internet or child pornography. He suggested the large number of deleted files resulted from him deleting a copy of Windows which he had made.
At an earlier hearing, Daams's counsel, John Edwards SC, said his client had moved to Ireland over 20 years ago and was a full-time carer for his wife, Yoke, who is wheelchair bound. An interest in adult pornography led to his visiting child pornography sites, but the majority of the images were at the lesser end of the scale and there was no evidence that he had generated the images by photographing children or had traded them for commercial gain, he added.
Mr Edwards said Daams had no previous convictions and that he was very concerned about the implications for his wife if he was jailed, and he asked Judge Moran to take as lenient a view as possible.Mr Edwards said Daams and his wife were moving back to Holland and for that reason, he was unlikely to come before the Irish courts again.
Judge Moran said that while gardaí may have some suspicions about the 5,800 images that were deleted from Daams's computer when they recently visited, they accepted they had no evidence and he accepted Daams's assurance that he had not accessed child pornography.
He said Daams's wife relied on him and if he was to impose a custodial sentence, she would suffer considerable hardship. He imposed a two-year suspended term and ordered his name to be put on the Register of Sex Offenders for five years.