A man has admitted possession of child sexual abuse material, after what the Circuit Court judge in Tralee described as a phishing expedition by gardaí.
47-year-old Seamus Curran, with an address in Kilcummin, admitted to possession of 24 child sexual abuse material images, and possession of an explicit conversation in breach of the Child Pornography Act.
His barrister Richard Liston told the court Mr Curran had actually deleted the files years before gardaí came knocking on his door.
Tralee Circuit Court heard that in 2019, gardaí received what was described as “hearsay evidence” about a Kik account and an email address, linked to the home of the accused man at the time in Callinafercy, Killorglin.
Gardaí searched Mr Curran’s home and seized two phones, an iPad, and a laptop, which were all examined.
Mr Curran made some admissions about having a Kik account, while he also admitted seeing images of children but denied downloading or uploading any images.
No illegal material was found on either phone or the iPad, but on examination, the laptop contained 24 images of child sexual abuse material.
Four of these were the most serious category of image, 19 were classed as child exposure, and one was an anime image.
The laptop also contained an explicit conversation appearing to be between an adult and child, which was not an image but was a breach of the Child Pornography Act.
Mr Curran’s barrister Richard Liston told the court that the laptop which was seized was still using a 2007 operating system in 2019.
He said the images found had been deleted since 2014 and were not readily accessible in a folder on the computer, but the data from them still appeared in what’s known as unallocated clusters within the computer.
Mr Liston said his client had identified the error in his ways five years prior to gardaí knocking on his door, and there is no evidence of any offending since those images were deleted in 2014.
Mr Liston said the number of images was relatively small, and he’s at low risk of re-offending.
Judge Alec Gabbett said gardaí went on a phishing expedition in 2019 and caught him, with which Mr Liston agreed.
Judge Gabbett adjourned the case to hand down his judgment on 9th June.
