A man who was caught in possession of over 4,300 images of child abuse and distributed a video of child abuse via email has been jailed for 18 months.
Kevin Maguire (29) sent an email with an attachment depicting an approximately 10-year-old girl being orally raped by an adult man to two separate email addresses. He has no previous convictions.
Maguire, of The Hedgerow, Foxrock, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of child pornography at Castlefarm, Shankill, on May 7th, 2015 and to distribution of child pornography at the same address on an unknown date between August 2th, 2011 and October 22nd, 2011.
Passing sentence on Friday, Judge Melanie Greally said the volume of images was "very substantial" and it was evident Maguire was accumulating the material over a four year period, which only came to an end when he was detected.
Judge Greally said that there had been a three year delay in analysing the material due to a lack of resources. She noted that Maguire has been assessed as being at a low risk of re-offending and has been in a committed relationship for two-and-a-half years.
She said that bearing in mind the ease of which child pornographic material was accessible and the high volume of material in this case, it was her view that “the principle of general deterrence” could not be achieved other than with a custodial sentence.
Judge Greally sentenced Maguire to two years’ imprisonment, but suspended the final six months of the sentence on strict conditions.
Russian website
At an earlier sentencing hearing, Detective Garda Bernard Dunne told Diarmuid Collins BL, prosecuting, that on foot of information received from Interpol regarding the exchange of images on a Russian website, the IP address of a Hotmail account associated with a user name on the website was traced to Shankill.
Det Garda Dunne said that on the date in May 2015, gardaí searched the house where the accused lived with his parents. Maguire admitted he had child pornography on his computer and two laptops were seized for analysis.
The first laptop contained 1,070 images and 55 videos of child abuse. This material included both boys and girls ranging in age from babies of a few months old to teenagers under the age of 17 being sexually abused and with their genitals exposed.
Gardaí also discovered records of search terms directed towards finding child pornography and records of the Russian website being accessed.
The second laptop contained 3,310 images and 65 videos of child pornography. This material included boys and girls of the same age range being sexually abused and with their genitals exposed.
An email was sent from this laptop with a file attached to two email addresses. The file was a seven minute video depicting an approximately 10-year-old girl being orally raped by an adult man.
Det Garda Dunne agreed with Philip Rahn BL, defending, that there was no suggestion of contact with children or financial transactions in this case. He agreed the distribution charge related to the sending of the email and Maguire was not a systematic distributor for gain.
Mr Rahn said his client attended counselling and group therapy following the search of his then home in 2015. He said his client had spent the last five years with this case hanging over his head.
Judge Greally noted that there was no need to pay for child pornography when it was so easy to access and so many people were quite happy to trade the material.