A divorced father of six who downloaded child pornographic images described by Judge Yvonne Murphy as "amongst the worst that have ever come before the courts" has been remanded on bail for sentence.
Gerard McMahon (53), a former civil servant, of The Richmond, off North Brunswick Street, Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to five counts of possession of child pornography on dates in March 2002.
Det Sgt James Madden told Ms Martina Baxter, prosecuting, that gardaí from Harcourt Square Garda station seized two computers, cables and a keyboard from McMahon's apartment on September 29th, 2002.
McMahon admitted using his credit card to access images and movie files, depicting babies and children up to 13 or 14 years of age, but did not save, print or exchange these images. "They are of a graphic and horrific nature and fall into the very serious end of the child pornography scale,", Det Sgt Madden said. A sample of the pictures and movies recovered were shown to Judge Murphy.
Det Sgt Madden told Ms Baxter the images clearly depicted young children, not young teenagers who could be mistaken for adults. He said that every time he viewed the images, he found them "very hard to look at and very hard to take". He said the images showed children posing in sexual positions and performing sexual acts on other children and adults.
Some of the images were exact recordings of sexual assaults on young children. One showed a boy raping a girl. Det Sgt Madden said McMahon admitted he knew the nature of these images when he accessed them but added that it was his intention to delete them after they were viewed.
Det Sgt Madden did not accept a suggestion by defence counsel Mr Martin Dully that McMahon showed "self-disgust" for his participation in these offences. "I saw no evidence of that whatsoever." He accepted that McMahon had not created any files to retain these images but had mostly accessed and deleted them after he viewed them.
Mr Dully applied to Judge Murphy to adjourn sentencing for six months to allow for an assessment from the Granada Institute. Judge Murphy adjourned sentencing to February 22nd next as she said the offence was too serious to allow for such a long adjournment.