A former Garda presenter on RTÉ's Crimeline started a nine-month prison sentence yesterday for having solicited sex with a 12-year-old girl in a Limerick brothel.
Judge Patricia Ryan told the ex-Malahide Garda sergeant, Gerard Lynch, she could see no reason for reducing the sentence imposed by the District Court.
She said Lynch (42) had fully contested the charge in the District Court before having belatedly entered a plea of guilty during his appeal to the Circuit Court.
Judge Ryan was told by Lynch's counsel, Mr John Peart SC, that since having been caught in a Garda "sting" operation in the Limerick brothel in 1999, Lynch had lost his job, his home and his wife, his pension and car and had brought great hurt upon his family.
"He is a man who had a satisfactory career in the Garda Síochána who has now come to being someone looked on with a great deal of scorn by the proper-thinking people of Ireland for what he has done," Mr Peart said.
After presenting a number of witnesses as to his past good record and his current psychiatric condition, Mr Peart told Judge Ryan he had punished himself very severely for his wrongful act and asked Judge Ryan to consider imposing a non-custodial sentence.
He said his parents who live in Millbrook Lawns, Old Bawn, Tallaght, had taken him back and he was undergoing counselling and therapeutic treatment.
Judge Ryan, affirming the order of the District Court, said she was taking into consideration his good record since the date of the offence and his excellent record in the Garda.
The court had already heard how a woman garda had posed, in blonde wig and plain clothes, as a brothel keeper capable of supplying Lynch with a 12-year-old girl for sex.
A video of a conversation between the garda and Lynch in a bedroom in a brothel known as Erotica, Elm Street, Limerick, had been shown to the court identifying Lynch sitting on a bed talking to Sgt Anne-Marie McMahon about the girl.
The video also showed Supt John Kerins later entering the bedroom and arresting Lynch.
Half way through his Circuit Court appeal Lynch had entered a plea of guilty and his case had been adjourned for medical and psychological reports.