A life sentence imposed on a Dublin man for the rape of his teenagenephew has been cut to ten years by the Court of Criminal Appeal.
A 14-year concurrent sentence imposed on the man on child pornography charges was also reduced to eight years.
The court furthercut from five to four years concurrent terms imposed for sexuallyassaulting several other boys, aged from 10 to 16 years on dates between1989 and 1999, and cut from five to three years a sentence imposed forpossession of child pornography.
The effect of the decision by the three judge court is that the single42-year-old man, who cannot be named in order to protect the identityhis victims, all of whom he is related to, will serve a total term often years imprisonment.
He had pleaded guilty to 11 charges and sixothers were taken into consideration.
In reducing the sentences, the court took into account the man's guiltyplea, his co-operation with gardai and lack of previous convictions.
Prior to sentencing the man at the Central Criminal Court in November2002, Mr Justice Carney stopped viewing a video recording made by theman of his activities with one boy and remarked: "I cannot watch anymore of this."
The court also viewed part of the video but, giving its judgmentyesterday, Mr Justice Geoghegan, sitting with Mr Justice Kearns and MrJustice Herbert, said the court had not seen in the video any additionalfactor which was relevant to the determination of an appropriatesentence.
The trial heard gardai found 200,000 pornographic images on the man'scomputer and on CD-roms and floppy discs, mostly involving adultpornography, after a victim had complained to them in June 2000. Theyfound 783 images of the man's abuse of his victims. The man wasdescribed as a person obsessed with his homosexuality and withdownloading pornographic material from the Internet.
The man had admitted buggering and assaulting a 13-year-old boy on datesbetween January 1st 1991 and December 31st 1993 in Galway and at hishome.
He also pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting three other boys ondates unknown between 1989 and 2000 in his home and in hotels around thecountry.
He further admitted allowing children in his care to be used for the purposes of production of child pornography and to producing child pornography on dates from 1989 to 2000.