A businessman, Tim Allen, was sentenced to 240 hours' community service and ordered to pay €40,000 to a child welfare charity at Midleton District Court, Co Cork, yesterday after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography.
Allen (52), of Kinoith, Shanagarry, Co Cork, who operates Ballymaloe Cookery School with his wife, the chef Darina Allen, was convicted of possessing child pornography in North Shanagarry on May 27th last contrary to Section 6 of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act, 1998.
Judge Michael Pattwell said he was substituting community service and the "healthy" contribution to a local charity, the Edith Wilkins Foundation, which helps street children in Calcutta, for a nine-month prison sentence.
Allen told the court he was "absolutely horrified" at what he had done. Child pornography did an enormous amount of untold damage to young people, and his actions were inexcusable, he said.
He said he was receiving psychiatric treatment and could categorically assure the court that his wrongdoing had "stopped dead" the day his home was raided. He added that he had instructed his psychologist, Dr Anthony Humphreys, to inform the courts if he ever stopped receiving treatment.
Asked what effect the affair had had on him, Allen said it had completely undermined his credibility and brought an "extraordinary amount of shame" on him and his family.
Det Sgt Brian Goulding of Midleton Garda station said the seizures at Shanagarry followed an operation against child pornography in the United States in which the premises of a company distributing images on the Internet were raided.
Among the receipts found during that raid was one in the name of Allen, who had given two addresses: Kinoith and "BCS" or Ballymaloe Cookery School.
Search warrants were procured, and the two premises were searched on the morning of May 27th last. Sixteen computers were seized, and pornographic images were found on three of these.
Det Sgt Goulding said that following forensic examination it was discovered that 144 images had been deleted from the first computer, the majority child pornography, including 29 images which appeared to be females aged under 12 and some as young as five.
On the other two computers 684 and 125 images had been deleted, the majority child pornography, including 132 and 13 images respectively which would appear to be children aged under 12 and some as young as five.
He noted that images discovered on the cookery school computer related to females, who appeared to be under 17 years of age, performing oral sex. There were also images of apparent sexual intercourse and images where vibrators appeared to be used.
In total, he said, 977 images were recovered and examined.
During the search, he added, the defendant's wife received a call from Allen, who was overseas at the time, and the defendant then admitted he had accessed sites. He told his wife and the Garda where they could locate certain photographs. Some 92 printed images were subsequently found in two envelopes.
Bank statements showed that Allen made five payments to the Internet company, of about $20 each time, between October 1998 and August 1999.
On one computer, sites were accessed twice in 1998, five times in 1999, 16 times in 2000 and eight times in 2001. On another, they were accessed three times in 2001 and 17 times in 2002.
One image of a child which was found on one of the computers was also discovered on a floppy disk, the sergeant said.
Allen was arrested on November 15th and shown every one of the images. In reply to each he said "No comment," Det Sgt Goulding noted.
Under cross-examination by Mr Colm Allen SC for the defendant, Det Sgt Goulding agreed that the deleted images might only have been viewed for a matter of seconds. The only images which he could say were downloaded and stored were the 92 on paper and the image on the disk, the sergeant said.
He added that the defendant had co-operated fully and made no attempt to conceal what he had done other than claiming that he had "tried and failed" to download images on to floppy disks.
Dr Humphreys, a consultant clinical psychologist in practice in Midleton, told the court that Allen had sought help from him in April 2002 over his "compulsive behaviour". Dr Humphreys, who said he had treated Allen on an intermittent basis over the past seven years, described the images as "mild" by the standards of child pornography, even though they depicted children in various states of undress.
Supt Liam Hayes for the DPP said he could show the court further images from the cookery school computer if the judge desired. However, Mr Allen said he had been told those images would not be submitted in evidence, as there was open access to that computer and a question over whether the defendant had procured them.
Dr Humphreys further told the court that the defendant had been humiliated by the affair and had become "quite suicidal". He said since the seizure the defendant had received treatment weekly, if not twice weekly in the past six months.
Dr Humphreys described the defendant as an indirect threat to children. He was "culpable of contributing to an exploitable industry but not a threat to children that come into his company".
Calling for a non-custodial sentence, defence counsel said he attached "huge significance" to the fact that the defendant had sought assistance prior to the raid.
He added that the "sad saga" had attracted the "most lurid" sort of publicity.
"The dogs on the printing presses have been roaring in a highly speculative manner on the demon that supposedly my client is," Mr Allen said.
His client was not a demon, nor a monster, but a kind and caring person and loving husband and father.