April 2021

Student who said he would ‘save gardaí the hassle’ of searching his laptop for child images is given suspended sentence

A Co Donegal man who admitted downloading dozens of pictures and movies of children being sexually abused by a German-based paedophile ring has walked free from prison.

Computer science student and electrician Martin Ferris was caught by gardaí who raided two properties after the accused was identified by his IP computer address by European police agency Interpol.

Officers raided the 32-year-old’s home in Ballyshannon and a rented flat in Letterkenny where they found the cache of horrific material.

Detectives recovered a large stash of items on Ferris’s laptop computer and also a hard-drive.

The haul included 152 images and 143 movies all containing explicit material of children aged from four years to 14 years involved in various sexual acts.

Ferris immediately admitted his crimes to gardaí saying he would “save them the hassle” of looking for child pornography on his laptops.

Detective Garda John Rooney said Ferris supplied them with passwords and was very cooperative with their investigation.

Ferris, of St Benildus Avenue in Ballyshannon appeared at Letterkenny Circuit Court

Judge John Aylmer said the first charge of images contained on the hard-drive were of a very serious nature despite what he called the “relatively low volume” of material found.

He placed this charge at the upper end of such categories and merited a prison sentence of two and half years before mitigation.

The second charge of six movies on a laptop he placed at the lower end of such categories and merited 18 months before mitigation.

However, he said that these should be reduced to 20 months and 12 months on mitigation.

This mitigation included his early plea, his obvious remorse, the fact that he had no previous charges, had undergone counselling and had offered a sum of €2,500 to a children’s charity.

Judge Aylmer said however, that this was one of those rare cases in which the entire sentence should be suspended due to all the mitigating circumstances.

He added the fact that the accused had had the case hanging over him for the past five years was one of these factors.

He adjourned the case until July and said that if Ferris pays the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children the sum of €2,500 he would suspend the entire sentence.

He placed him in the care of the probation services and also ordered him to be put ion the Sex Offenders Register.

April 2021

Pervert  downloaded hundreds of child sex abuse photos

A man who admitted to downloading hundreds of child abuse pictures and videos said he now knows it’s not a “victimless crime”.

Donegal computer science student and electrician Martin Ferris was caught by gardai who simultaneously raided his home in Ballyshannon and a rented flat in Letterkenny.

Gardai at the Paedophile Investigation Unit had received information from their colleagues at the European Police Agency Interpol, who tracked down Ferris through his IP address.

Detectives recovered a large stash of items on Ferris’ computers and hard-drives.

The haul included 152 images and 143 movies all containing explicit material of children aged from four to 14 involved in various sexual acts.

On the day of the searches, 32-year-old Ferris came clean to gardai straight away, saying he would “save them the hassle” of looking for child pornography on his devices.

Detective Garda John Rooney said Ferris, who was a student at the Letterkenny Institute of Technology, supplied them with passwords and was very cooperative with their investigation.

Ferris, of St Benildus Avenue in Ballyshannon, pleading guilty to charges of possession of child sexual abuse imagery  told Letterkenny Circuit Court that he always suffered from social anxiety.

“I have always been socially awkward and backwards,” he said.

Since being caught with the child pornography, Ferris has undergone counselling and now recognised the fact that this was not a victimless crime.

He had brought €2,500 to court which he had saved up and wanted to offer this as some compensation to a children’s charity for what he had done.

He added: “I have seen my behaviour and I have seen that this is not a victimless crime and there had to be accountability and I can give something back.”

Judge John Aylmer adjourned the case for final sentencing until next Tuesday.

April 2021

Home of paedophile attacked by locals after abuser is released from prison

The home of paedophile Christopher O’Toole has come under attack from locals angry at his return to his home in south Dublin.

Several of the upper windows of the house where O’Toole has been living since his release from prison had rocks fired through them last week.

Pigeon racer O’Toole was unmasked as a convicted child sex abuser in early March after his victim waived her anonymity following his release from prison.

O’Toole (59) was released from Arbour Hill after he served five years in prison on 42 counts of abusing a young girl.

O’Toole was sentenced to eight years in prison with one suspended in December 2015 – but he could only be named as a sex offender after his victim gave a public account of the ordeal he subjected her to from 1983 to 1985.

“The main thing for me in giving this interview is that people will now know what he is and that he is a danger,” the woman said last month.

“I was aged between four and five years old when he abused me.

“My mam used to drop me to his mother’s for me to be minded when she went to work.

“And he was this woman’s son and he lived there.”

Recalling the nature of the abuse O’Toole, who was then in his 20s, subjected her to, the woman said: “It was as if he always used to know if I was coming up to the stairs to use the bathroom.

“And as I’d walk by the bedroom door would be open and he’d be standing in front of the mirror masturbating.”

On other occasions, the woman said O’Toole would bring the then four-year-old into the bathroom.

“He’d bring me in there,” she recalled, “and he’d lie on the ground and he’d pull down his trousers and get me to rub shower gel and stuff into him and then get me to masturbate him, basically.

“I was four years old, I didn’t have a clue what he was making me do was wrong.”

The woman said in the years after the abuse she struggled greatly with depression and self-harm.

She didn’t report the abuse to gardai until after the birth of her own daughter nine years ago.

“After I had her, I started having horrific nightmares, nightmares about her being abused. According to the psychologist, that was my trigger for remembering everything and everything becoming clearer in my head.”

Two years after the birth of her daughter, the woman made a formal complaint against O’Toole.

“I can honestly say from the moment Detective Kieran Murphy first spoke to me I felt believed and that I would get justice.

“It wasn’t ever really about him [O’Toole] getting a sentence for me. I just wanted him to know I remembered what he’d done to me and I wanted other people to know him for what he really is.”

O’Toole was charged with 50 counts of sexual assault on the young girl, of which he was convicted on 42 counts and acquitted of eight others.

Asked why she was speaking out, the woman said she believes the people of Sallynoggin should know of O’Toole’s crimes.

“Now that he is out, I want people to know who he is,” she said.

“During the court case, he swanned around like nothing was happening.

“But people who do what he did are dangerous … and people need to know that and be able to protect their children from them.”

April 2021

Pervert appeals sentence

A 36-year-old man who was previously given a four month suspended prison sentence for the possession of indecent images of children has been unsuccessful in appealing the sentence.

Shane Cunningham, formerly of Weir View Apartments, Stephen St and now with an address in Galway appealed the sentence on severity only, at Sligo Circuit Criminal Court yesterday (Monday, 12th).

He had been given the suspended sentence last October after pleading guilty to possession of six images of child pornography, an offence contrary to Section 6 of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act.

At Monday’s court it was heard an investigation began in August 2014 and in September 2014 gardaí met with an acquaintance of the defendant who expressed concerns regarding what admissions Cunningham had made in relation to his conduct.

She told gardaí the defendant made certain comments at a social gathering, and she was concerned this meant he had viewed child pornography.

Gardaí spoke to another of Cunningham’s acquaintances who had been privy to the conversation and said the defendant spoke about viewing certain material which sounded like child porn.

Sergeant Lisa Sewell told Sligo Circuit Court a search was carried out at Cunningham’s rental address on September 5th 2014 and electronic items, emails and passwords were handed over to gardaí for examination.

Detective Garda Cliff Cullen of the National Child Exploitation Unit, examined the electronic items and found six images he believed to be child porn on a Seagate Barracuda hard drive. The images were of children who ranged in age of 4 months old to 16 years old, details of what was contained in the images were outlined to the charges

The six images were found among over 64,000 images of adult pornography that Cunningham had downloaded in June 2012.

Sgt Sewell had informed the court the investigation found there was no evidence that Cunningham had opened or interacted with the child porn images.

At the District Court hearing last year Sgt Sewell clarified that though the images were not viewed, they were available to be viewed on a thumbnail on the hard drive.

The investigation also found that Cunningham had made two searches on two separate search engines, one for ‘paedophile guide’ and the other for ‘underage fem dom’.

Although not involved in the original investigation, Detective Garda Paul Fitzpatrick of the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau told the court that in relation to the images found, somebody would have had to download or copy them to that hard drive and the images may not have been opened since.

The detective garda said the images could have been taken directly from a website and put on to a hard drive. He added that the images could have been viewed on a website but were not viewed on the hard drive.

He said the file was created on Cunningham’s hard drive in 2013 so they were copied from another device.

In relation to the searches under ‘paedophile guide’ and ‘underage fem dom’, the detective garda said the searches although they could have been deleted, like, perhaps a Word document, were saved to the computer’s Random Access Memory.

“Data still resides on the computer even if deleted. It is all saved to RAM.”

He said though there was no ‘time stamp’ for when the search took place for the ‘paedophile guide’ the Google search for ‘underage fem dom’ took place on March 18th, 2012.

Defence barrister, Mr Niall Flynn, instructed by Mr Gerard McGovern, solicitor, put it to the detective that there was no evidence his client ever viewed or interacted with the six images.

Judge Francis Comerford commented, “One would anticipate someone would have viewed them.”

The detective garda said there was no evidence the copies of the images had been viewed.

When it was put to him by the defence that ‘snapshots’ can be taken on the internet without this being known by the user, the detective said the images had been saved specifically to a folder.

In relation to the search engine words, Mr Flynn told the court his client will say the search for ‘paedophile guide’ was in relation to a news article on the internet and his search for ‘underage fem dom’ was actually meant to be ‘under cage fem dom’, which Mr Flynn told the court was a ‘specific type of activity’.

State prosecutor, Mr Leo Mulrooney, BL informed the court when questioned, Cunningham was cooperative with gardaí and said although he had downloaded large quantities of pornography over the last 15 to 16 years, he did not intentionally download child pornography.

The court was told the defendant had said he downloaded adult pornography from the website ‘4chan’ and he had seen mention of the site in relation to child pornography.

When asked if Cunningham provided gardaí with an explanation for the search terms relating to ‘paedophile guide’ and ‘under age fem dom’, Sgt Sewell informed the court no explanation was given for the first term, and in relation to the second term he said, he ‘literally had no memory of this’ and said ‘it is something I would search because it’s fem dom but I’ve no memory, I was literally f***ed out of my head on drugs’.

Giving evidence at the appeal hearing and when asked if he had any recollection of downloading the images to his hard drive, Cunningham said ‘not specifically’ and said he downloaded “huge amounts of information, hours and hours on end, not just porn, films, games books, pages and pages of info.”

Asked why he did this, the defendant said it was a “repetitive action to calm myself, an obsessive thing to do.”

Cunningham said he had only been diagnosed with Asperger’s at the time and was “confused about who I was” and spent all day every day in front of his computer.

When asked what he thought of child pornography, Cunningham said, “It makes me sick that it exists” and said he “never intentionally looked at it”.

By way of explaining the search terms gardaí were concerned with, Cunningham told the court the ‘paedophile guide’ was an eBook that was in the news at the time that had been removed from Amazon. He told the court it was ‘newsworthy’ and he was ‘curious’ about it.

He told the court the other search term had been a ‘mistype’ and he was searching for ‘under cage fem dom’.

In cross examination, Mr Mulrooney said it was difficult to believe he was telling the truth as he had not provided these explanations to gardaí when interviewed.

Cunningham told the court in the intervening period he had went back to college and studied law and philosophy and completed 7 of 8 entrance examinations (FE1s) to the Law Society of Ireland. He said he is in a relationship and hoped to get married.

“If I can get this out of way I hope to get married. This is literally tearing everything apart,” said the defendant.

Along with the suspended sentence Cunningham was placed on the Sex Offenders Register.

Asked how this would hinder him, he said, “it basically stops me from doing anything, leaves me with no future.”

On behalf of his client, Mr Flynn asked the court to consider leaving Cunningham without a recorded conviction.

This request was denied by Judge Francis Comerford who affirmed the District Court sentence and said the facts concluded that from what was ‘approaching an addiction to pornography’, the judge believed he did view ‘child sexual pornography’. A destruction order for two of the defendant’s devices was made to the court.

March 2021

Former bank worker caught with thousands of child sexual abuse images avoids jail

A former bank worker caught with thousands of sexually explicit images of children has been given a fully suspended sentence after saying he believed they were actors posing as children

Robert Traynor (54) told gardaí that he believed the images were of adults posing as children, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard.

March 2021

Child sex abuser attempted to take case for unfair dismissal

This is the face of the school caretaker who had the gall to sue his former bosses for unfair dismissal after they found out he was molesting boys at the school.

Bernard Browne (62) was this week locked up for nine years for the sexual abuse of three boys from the CBS school on North Richmond Street, in Dublin city centre.

Gardaí began investigating Browne for the first time in 1993. At that stage school authorities acted promptly and confronted him.

Browne used the promise of small amounts of cash to entice the boys into situations where he would sexually molest them.

He would ejaculate while rubbing himself naked against them and convinced some of the children that he was only doing this to collect his sperm and donate it to childless couples.

Browne resigned from the school but the brass-necked child abuser later tried to claim the school had forced him to resign.

He even went as far as taking an unfair dismissal case against the school board but he quickly dropped the case when he realised Garda investigators were sitting in on the public hearings.

In the 1993 cases, the DPP directed no prosecutions but in 2017 gardaí received information about another victim from the child abuse charity One-In-Four.

This week a source close to the investigation said that the three victims had been fearful about coming forward.

“Either they thought he was dead or their story wouldn’t be believed,” our source said.

After finally finding the strength to tell his One-In-Four counsellor about the abuse, one of the victims then went to gardaí.

During the investigation that followed detectives spoke to the two other men. Those investigations, which involved painstaking trawling of historical school records, resulted in the caging of Browne on Thursday.

The victims told gardaí how Browne used the promise of extra pocket money to lure them into his janitor’s shed where he would fondle them for his own sexual kicks. The boys were aged between 11 and 16 and Browne would molest them on a weekly basis.

The twisted paedophile also tricked the terrified victims into going back to his flat on Belvedere Place in Dublin city centre where he would force himself onto them.

The sicko convinced the boys that he was simply trying to make some extra cash by selling his sperm to a sperm bank.

He told one victim that he was collecting his sperm to help childless couples who wanted to have kids.

Last October, as he was about to go on trial, Browne pleaded guilty to nine counts of indecently assaulting three boys on dates between 1983 and 1990.

The nine counts are samples charges from an indictment of 44 charges.

Browne, formerly of Brighton Road, Foxrock, Dublin, was aged between 25 and 28 when he began molesting the first victim, an 11-year-old boy.

He had told the child he could earn some extra pocket money by helping him sweep and brought him to a shed at the back of the school where he molested him.

This boy told the second victim that Browne needed boys to stimulate him so he could sell his sperm to a donor bank and he would get money for it.

The two boys went to Browne’s flat and Browne lay each one down in turn on the floor, stripped them and rubbed himself against them until he climaxed.

The court heard these attacks occurred on a weekly basis.

Browne abused the third victim from 1987 to 1990 when the boy was aged 14 to 17.

As an adult this victim told gardaí that he innocently believed Browne’s story that he was collecting his sperm to help couples who couldn’t have babies.

He said he felt very scared during the abuse and didn’t know “what the hell was going on”.

Browne threatened this boy not to tell anyone about the abuse or his family would be wiped out.

Judge Elma Sheahan said the assaults caused the victims to turn to alcohol and drug abuse to bury their torment.

She suspended the final year of a ten-year prison term on condition that Browne complete treatment programmes while in custody.