Man who had nearly 10,000 indecent images and videos of children gets 30 months in prison
A man who was in possession of almost 10,000 images and videos of child pornography has been jailed for 30 months.
Steven McGivern (aged 42) of Roseleigh Street, Belfast, Co. Antrim, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of child pornography at his former address of Garville Road, Rathgar, Dublin, on November 26, 2012.
The court heard that having received information from Canadian police via Interpol, gardaí obtained a search warrant for McGivern's apartment. During the search gardaí seized a laptop, a PC, a USB stick and several DVDs.
A total of 9,595 images and 178 videos of child pornography were discovered across all of the electronic devices.
The images and videos depicted preteen boys and girls with their genitals exposed, engaged in sexual activity with each other and engaged in sexual activity with adult males.
In interview, McGivern told gardaí they would discover child pornography on his laptop which he had downloaded from the internet. He admitted he knew his activity was illegal and that he did it for sexual gratification.
McGivern also gave gardaí a credit card on which there were details of payment for videos of child pornography.
Judge Sinéad Ní Chúalacháin said McGivern has three previous convictions that were directly relevant to this offence. McGivern was convicted of indecent assault in 1999 and of two charges of attempting to take indecent photos of children in 2003.
Judge Ní Chúalacháin said the case was aggravated by the volume of offending material, the period of time it was downloaded and the age of some children being as young as seven years old. She noted that this was not a case in which McGivern had shared or distributed the offending material.
She said that while he did not have physical contact with the children, this was not a victimless crime as real children were involved. She said that the fact that he had paid for some of the pornography meant that someone had made financial gain from the exploitation of children.
Judge Ní Chúalacháin said the mitigating factors in the case were his guilty plea, his admissions at interview and the “extreme and appalling delay” of almost seven years in completing the case.
“I have to regard you as not unlikely to re-offend,” she told the accused due to his admission he committed the offence for sexual gratification. She said she therefore did not regard him as suitable for community sanction.
Judge Ní Chúalacháin sentenced McGivern to two-and-a-half years imprisonment. She also ordered that he follow all directions of the Probation Service for two-year's post release and engage with any service or programme deemed relevant by a probation officer.
