A school special needs assistant has avoided jail after he was found in possession of child sex abuse material, including two images of the most extreme category.
Ian O’Connor (42) of Carrow Road, Drimnagh, Dublin 12, pleaded guilty to a single count of having breached the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act, 1998.
Detective Garda Sean Carrick of Terenure Garda station agreed with Conor McKenna BL prosecuting, that the accused had come to Garda attention after an online report was made by the child exploitation unit of the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
Investigating Gardaí isolated the accused’s name and address, and a search warrant for his home was executed, during which a number of devices were seized.
Mr McKenna told Judge Martin Nolan that the accused was at home with his wife at the time of the search and that both were cooperative.
Although an initial Garda download search of O’Connor’s Samsung phone tested negative for offending material, when the phone was sent for analysis to the Garda Cyber Crime Unit, which Detective Carrick said had more sophisticated “premium software”, images of child sexual abuse were found which had been downloaded through the Kik app.
When Garda Brian Gillan examined the device on the 15th of July 2024, he made a “triage categorisation” of the contents, which included 374 indecent images.
Mr McKenna outlined that child sexual abuse material, called “child pornography in law”, is categorised as images which show children participating in or witnessing sexual acts, including oral, vaginal, or anal intercourse and masturbation.
Child exploitation, he said, consisted of images of children where the “genital or anal” area is exposed, and that “child anime” or “child indicative” images are animated or computer-generated indecent images of children.
The accused, who was supported by his wife in court, had two images of category one abuse, 27 images of child exploitation, and 318 images of “child anime”.
When Mr McKenna began to embark on a sample of the content concerned, Judge Nolan said,” I don’t need that. I can guess at this point.”
Defending counsel, David Perry BL, argued that the accused had taken “ownership” of the phone and that he had provided his passwords and pins.
Although the search took place on the 5th of December 2022, on the 6th of December, the accused presented himself at a Garda station and said that there were child sex abuse images on his phone, which he had deleted.
Mr Perry argued that the majority of the images were not of real children, and that O’Connor had accessed the material at a time of great personal strain when he was looking after his sick father in another county and had been away from his wife.
He argued that his client had been “very close” to his parents, who have both since passed away, and that he studied journalism in Griffith College before doing a master’s in radio in Maynooth.
After this, he became a special needs assistant and worked in two schools in Dublin for five years, and he accepts that his wrongdoing means “the end of his career”.
He said that the accused was “isolated in Waterford” when he was using Kik and that others in the chats were sending the material, and that he is “truly sorry for what he’s done.”
He’s going to suffer within his community, Mr Perry said, pleading for leniency. He argued that his client has engaged in numerous therapy sessions and is categorised as being at a very low risk of reoffending.
Having heard the facts, Judge Nolan said that the accused had used certain apps where the material was being circulated, but that “You cannot accidentally download these images; it requires a bit of effort.”
“Authorities all over the world are looking closely at these apps,” he said.
Judge Nolan said that although courts “don’t possess clairvoyant opinions”, it was his view that the accused “probably” will not reoffend.
He pointed to the case of DPP vs Loving, saying that this was the legal precedent, but was “a reasonably old case now”.
Judge Nolan said that aggravating factors such as relevant previous convictions, “personal involvement with the victim”, or “an extraordinary number” of images were absent in this case, although it was “still serious”.
He said that most of the images were”hentai”, which “shows a state of mind”.
The accused was sentenced to 16 months in jail, which was suspended in full for 16 months on condition of good behaviour and a cashless bond.
“A conviction such as this will have far-reaching consequences,” Judge Nolan said, adding, “A lot of avenues will be closed to him” and, “Rightly, he will be castigated and shamed in his community”.