Man posed online as lesbian while working as civil servant to engage children in sexual conversations
A FORMER civil servant was jailed for two years at Trim Circuit Court last week for possessing and distributing child sex abuse images and videos.
Thomas O’Brien (61), Mooretown, Ratoath had previously pleaded guilty to 41 counts of possession of child sex abuse images on diverse dates between 31st January 2014 and 29th January 2016 at the Office of Public Procurement Jonathan Swift St, Trim and to three counts of possessing email accounts containing video files and images of child porn on dates between 1st January 2012 and 15th September 2015.
O'Brien a former assistant principal officer with the Office of Public Procurement also pleaded guilty to four charges of knowingly distributing child sex abuse images via email on dates between February 2010 and September 2015.
Earlier this year the court heard that O'Brien a married father-of-two had posed as a lesbian on the ‘Tagged’ on line forum to engage in sexual conversations with other users of the networking platform some whom identified themselves as children.
“The chat was extremely graphic”, a detective garda from the On-line Child Exploitation Unit told prosecuting counsel Carl Hanahoe BL.
The detective said that gardai were alerted by the US-based National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children about sexualised chat contained in a number of Irish-based email accounts.
Following investigations one of the IP addresses involved was found to be associated with the Irish government and another was traced to the defendant’s home.
Gardai seized devices at O'Brien's home and office and on one found that 93 image files had been accessed 31 of which were still accessible while 24 movie files had been accessed of which 19 were still accessible.
The court heard the material involved children ranging from toddlers to those in their mid teens engaged in a range of sexual activity mostly with adults. The children were predominently girls.
The investigators also identified a number of email addresses to which O'Brien had distributed 112 images and 12 videos of child sex abuse.
Defence barrister Barry White SC said the offending had been carried out during a three-and-three-quarter year period and had stopped before gardai had contacted O'Brien.
The barrister who handed in a number of psychogical reports on the defendant said his client was very remorseful and had since lost his job.
Judge Martina Baxter then adjourned sentence pending the completion of probation reports on the defendant.
Imposing sentence at the adjourned hearing Judge Baxter identified the graphic nature of the images which predominantly involved adults with children and their distribution as aggravating factors.
“This is not a victimless crime. Every image is a crime against a child”, said the judge.
Judge Baxter sentenced O'Brien to two years for possessing the child sex abuse material and a concurrent term of three years for its distribution with the final 24 months suspended on those charges.