A bookkeeper who admitted to being in possession of 1,200 child pornographic texts, images and videos has been given a three-year suspended sentence by Judge Frank O'Donnell at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
Paul Bradshaw (34), Balally Avenue, Dundrum, Co Dublin, was arrested after a person saw him looking at child pornography and contacted gardaí. He pleaded guilty to possessing it at his home on November 30th, 2002.
Judge O'Donnell said the Granada Institute reported Bradshaw presented "a moderate risk" of reoffending. It said he had insight into his offence, but the probation report noted that while he admitted downloading images, Bradshaw still contended that some of the material he had was not pornographic.
"That is very disturbing as he doesn't seem to have come to terms with the reality of what it was," said Judge O'Donnell, who added that he viewed a sample of the images and texts and agreed they were at the lower end of the scale of pornography.
Ronan Kennedy BL (with Hugh Hartnett SC), defending, submitted that society would be best served if Bradshaw was not jailed and noted the contents of reports supporting his submission. He said Bradshaw had no previous convictions and was in employment.
Mr Hartnett had submitted at an earlier hearing that Bradshaw had been "engaged in a form of fantasy from a child" and that he got involved in the offence because of "social isolation" and "a lack of intimate relationships".
He said Bradshaw's development had seemed to be somewhat retarded until he had established "a satisfactory adult relationship of long standing" with a female friend which allowed him to "grow up".
Det Garda Paul Johnston said Bradshaw was caught with 80 texts containing stories of children engaging in sexual activity, 1,100 photographic images and 20 movies. While 5 per cent of the images recovered involved children engaged in sexual activity, the majority involved children posing naked. Their ages ranged from five to 16 years and they were predominantly male.
Det Garda Johnston agreed with Mr Hartnett that the images had been downloaded from the internet and that there was no evidence that Bradshaw was responsible for their distribution.