Aghamore man found with hundreds of child porn images

Aghamore man found with hundreds of child porn images


36-year-old man pleads guilty to possession of images and films after Interpol investigation

An Aghamore man has pleaded guilty to possession of 300 images and 27 film clips of child pornography.
Aiden McIntyre (36) of Lismeegan, Aghamore, Ballyhaunis, appeared before Castlebar Circuit Court last week after an Interpol operation over three years ago found that he had signed up for access to a child abuse website.
Detective Garda Martin Mitchell from Swinford Garda Station told the court that he called to search McIntyre’s house in 2009 following an Interpol investigation into child-abuse websites in Belarus and the UK.

Computer seized years ago
The Garda Paedophile Investigation Unit had received information about a number of people in Ireland who had paid for access to these websites. Aiden McIntyre was traced via his Internet Protocol (IP) address and, acting on this information, Detective Mitchell called to McIntyre’s house on March 27, 2009, and seized various items, including an Acer laptop.
Judge Thomas O’Donell said he was ‘flabbergasted’ that it took until April 29, 2012 – over three years – for the laptop to be analysed by a detective from the Garda’s Computer Crime Investigations Unit.
McIntyre was arrested by Gardaí on June 28 and appeared before Castlebar Circuit Court last Tuesday.
Detective Martin Hogan from the Computer Crime Investigations Unit of An Garda Siochana told the court that his case was towards the lower end of the scale of cases he had examined, in terms of volume.

Children aged 6-12
He told the court that he considered the children in the images and films to be between the ages of six and 12 years old.
He said that the 300 images contained 135 images which could be classified as Category 4 – images that involved children subjected to acts of oral or full penetrative sex. The remaining 165 images showed children to be semi-naked or naked with their genital areas exposed. These were classified as Category 2. Detective Hogan told the court that nine film clips were classified as Category 4 while 18 were classified as Category 2. The films lasted from 30 seconds to five minutes in length.

Large volume
Judge Thomas O’Donnell asked Detective Hogan why there was such a delay in the case being processed. Detective Hogan told the court that the volume of material they work on in the unit is ‘very large’.
“Once something is on our desk, we try to expedite it as quickly as possible. This case was processed in two weeks from when it arrived on my desk and that would be consistent with my colleagues too but we have a large volume of work to deal with,” he told the court.
He said that such cases are ‘a very large priority’ but that the unit itself is small, with a staff of ten. He added that it would be down to nine by the end of last week as Detective Hogan was retiring.
The court heard McIntyre, aged 36, is single and lives alone. He was arrested on June 28 and was in custody since appearing before court on August 22. He pleaded guilty from the outset, the court heard, and was not applying for bail which was, said defending counsel Diarmuid Connolly, ‘a concrete expression of remorse’.
The case has been adjourned until Thursday, October 18.