A father-of-two has been sentenced to four years with 18 months suspended for possession of over 50,000 child pornography images.
Kieran Kavanagh (51) of Catherine’s Court, Newgrove Avenue, Sandymount, Dublin, also had 102 films of child abuse including one showing a child being raped by an adult.
Judge Katherine Delahunt ordered that Kavanagh undergo 10 years of post-release supervision and liaise with any counselling services as ordered by the Probation Service for 18 months once he has served his sentence.
Defence counsel Remy Farrell said Kavanagh was divorced with two children in their 20s. He said his marriage had broken up because of his “realisation of his sexual identity.” He said he had achieved good employment in the IT sector but has since lost his job and because of this conviction, future prospects looked “somewhat bleak.”
Mr Farrell said Kavanagh had applied to the Granada Institute for treatment and was fully aware of the seriousness of the charges.
He asked Judge Delahunt to deal with Kavanagh without sending him to jail because of the “minimal treatment” there for sex offenders.
Kavanagh pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of the files on his computer and hard drive on September 15th, 2007.
Judge Delahunt had heard at the sentence hearing last November that the case was at the higher end of the scale and that most of the images showed children posing but some showed graphic sexual abuse.
She also heard Kavanagh had applied for treatment at the Granada Sexual Offenders Institute but could no longer afford it because he had lost his job. Funding for an assessment has since been arranged through the legal aid scheme and the institute had a report prepared for today’s hearing.
Judge Delahunt said it was clear from this report that Kavanagh needed ongoing treatment and had failed to understand the seriousness of the offences. She noted that the “volume and nature of the images” put it at the higher end of the scale but accepted that he had met the case “head on”.
She said she must structure the sentence to ensure that Kavanagh get treatment upon his release from prison before she suspended the final 18 months of his prison term on strict conditions.
Detective Garda Barry Walsh told the court gardaí were alerted by German authorities that Kavanagh was a subscriber to child pornography websites.
He said they obtained a search warrant and were let into the apartment by his flatmate. They found Kavanagh sitting on his bed and detained him while they seized a large amount of computer equipment. A laptop computer and external hard drive were examined by the Garda Computer Crimes Division who found the images and videos.
They had been saved by Kavanagh to the hard disk. Det Gda Walsh said the images were not concealed and were easily found on the computer.
Kavanagh was arrested and interviewed but refused to answer questions on the advice of his solicitor. However he later admitted the files were his and provided gardaí with a password to the laptop.