Two Dublin men appeared before Judge Orla Crowe at the Circuit Criminal Court within the last few days.
One of the men was jailed while the other was allowed to go free. You might think this is run off the mill stuff, but when you take a look at what the men were charged with you might change your mind.
Keith McDonnell, who exposed himself to a female garda and made threats was jailed by Judge Crowe for three years, while the other man, Eoin Prizeman, who was caught with 276 images of child abuse material including videos of rape was allowed to walk free.
McDonnell, who is 34 and has an address in Back Lane, Dublin 8, pleaded guilty to two counts of making threats to kill or cause serious harm to two members of An Garda Síochána on May 12th, 2020.
He also exposed his penis to a female Garda while making what were described by Judge Crowe as “misogynistic and vile” remarks.
The court heard that McDonnell had become homeless at the age of eight and had begun using drugs and alcohol from an early age. Judge Crowe said that a four sentence was warranted in the case before imposing a three year sentence due to mitigating factors.
Eoin Prizeman, who has an address in Killinarden, Tallaght, pleaded guilty to possession of child abuse material at his home. He also uploaded a video of a little boy being raped by an adult male to social media account of his.
Although Judge Crowe said that some 90% of the child abuse material that was found in Prizeman’s possession was of the highest category, she gave him a fully suspended 12 month sentence: he was allowed to walk free.
While the experience of the female garda in the McDonnell case, and that of her colleagues was no doubt extremely distressing and disgusting, this writer argues that deliberately seeking out and consuming extreme child abuse material is something akin to demonic for which the heaviest punishment should be warranted.
The Irish Independent reported that the videos Prizeman was caught with “ranged in length from a few seconds to over half an hour, and the youngest victim depicted was a baby boy of six to 12 months.”
Eoin Prizeman (35), who uploaded a video of a man raping a young boy to his own Facebook page and was caught with 276 videos of child abuse has been given a fully suspended sentence.https://t.co/rjtgBa7g1t pic.twitter.com/FPjR3x2SHP
— Courts News Ireland (@courtsnewsIRL) November 28, 2023
“The court heard that in this video, the baby boy was shown clearly distressed, tied to a makeshift bed, with his arms and legs bound.” it said.
Child pornography is not something one simply stumbles upon. It is something someone has to deliberately seek out, and given the fact that Prizeman has hundreds of videos of it, it’s clear that he spent quite some time doing just that.
Prizeman’s defense counsel argued that his client had been out of work during covid and that he had spent his time at home consuming cocaine and alcohol. It was also accepted that there was no evidence that he had participated in the production of the material.
So what?
The images Prizeman was enjoying while on hiatus from work were images of real children being raped or otherwise sexually abused.
If you listen to the testimonies of law enforcement agents whose job it is to watch the horrific images people like Prizeman pleasure themselves to in order to prepare court evidence, you would hear details of how the bodies of babies and young children tear and break while they are being raped by adult men.
Some children are raped over and over until the point of death. There are no child porn ‘actors’, there are only innocents who are being abused in the worst imaginable way.
The child who was raped in the video Prizeman shared is someone’s little boy.
Where is that child now? Is he still alive? Is he still being raped?
One wonders why Prizeman felt confident enough to upload the video onto social media and who he was sharing it with?
Yesterday this writer penned a news piece which included two more cases of men caught with child abuse material who were both given fully suspended sentences from the Irish courts.
I am unable to commit to writing what I think should be done to those who consume, produce, or procure child abuse material, but rest assured it’s far from giving them a suspended sentence.