A Kerry-born psychiatric nurse who made video tapes of himself engaged in sexual activities with children from the ages of four to 13 years-of-age was jailed for six years by Judge Des Hogan today.
Patrick Finbar Murphy (58), from Lower Beechwood Avenue, Ranelagh, but originally from Killarney admitted three counts of using a child for sexual exploitation on camcorder cassettes, video discs and digital discs at addresses in Dublin and Sligo between June 1st, 1999, and October 31st, 2001.
In the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court Judge Hogan said it was the type of serious offence that warranted a custodial sentence and because none of the injured parties were willing to prepare victim impact reports demonstrated to him they were too traumatised to relive their experiences.
"You connived your way into the trust and affection of the families of these children, who are the unfortunate victims," Judge Hogan told Murphy.
Detective Garda Liam Maher told Mr Des Zaidan BL, prosecuting, that Murphy was convicted of possessing indecent photographs in London and jailed for four months in 1995.
The following year he was jailed for 18 months on three charges of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy. He served only nine months.
Gardaí seized a video, a computer, a camcorder and a digital camera. They found 307 videos but only three of them, plus four camcorder cassettes, contained material of a pornographic nature.
They also found 22 images on the computer's hard-drive and 70 photographs with images of young children half-naked. Some of the videos contained children on a beach, which seemed like they had been taken on holiday. They also found two child pornography magazines.
Det Gda Maher said that all the children were extremely traumatised from what happened and none could talk about it. They were so devastated that they couldn't even prepare victim impact reports.
Mr George Birmingham SC, for Murphy, pleaded with Judge Hogan for leniency because his client was making the videos for his "own, perverted purposes" and was not selling or distributing them.