Report by Andrew Carey – [email protected]
A PRIMARY school caretaker and Church of Ireland lay minister attached to St Michael’s Church, Pery Square in Limerick, has been jailed for having some of “the gravest images” of child pornography on his home computer. 62-year-old Gerard Fitzgerald was handed down a five months prison sentence after the court heard from det gda Michael Hogan of the computer crime forensic unit in Harcourt Street, Dublin that evidence of 13 images, that had tried to be concealed and deleted, were found on the Dell PC owned by the semi retired caretaker.
Judge Eugene O’Kelly said that he was very concerned that the part-time caretaker had sought out such work given the defendant’s “appetites” for such pornographic material and Mr Fitzgerald’s possession of images said to have been at the “most severe end of the scale”.
The court heard that Mr Fitzgerald was a retired man on a disability allowance but was paid by St Michael’s Church to act as a caretaker for the adjacent primary school. He also denied knowledge of having the images on his computer on March 19, 2010, but had admitted to gardai, during interview, that he did look at child porn “once or twice a week”.
Retired Detective Garda Martin Hogan, formerly attached to Harcourt Street garda Station and the Garda computer crime investigation unit based there, gave evidence of examining a computer that gardai seized when a warrant to search the home of Mr Fitzgerald was executed.
He told the court that forensic software was used to extrapolate the data and the file location and history of the 13 images of child pornography.
The data uncovered that the images were viewed through a media player and had been created in October 2009 and were most recently accessed just four days before gardai arrived to his home in March 2010.
In follow-up investigations and further questioning of Mr Fitzgerald, the court heard that the Church of Ireland lay minister said he had images in a file folder called “Papist Humour” and when he was shown the 13 images, the defendant admitted having seen six images of naked children with the genitals exposed. He denied any knowledge of having seen the more explicit images where children, as young as five or six, were pictured involved in more graphic sexual exploitation including oral and penetrative sex. Mr Fitzgerald said those images “did not ring a bell” with him.
Det gda Hogan said in evidence that the media player application retained a history and the cache memory threw up the evidence of these images being viewed.
As the case was contested on a point of law by the defence as to Gerard Fitzgerald not having any knowledge of the images being on his computer, the investigating garda read the two interviews made with the accused.
Garda Niall Fitzgerald said that the primary school caretaker admitted that he “browsed the web for pornography, including bestiality. I find it interesting and intriguing how low people can go, the depths of depravity.”
The court heard from the memos that the defendant viewed the images out of curiosity and not for sexual gratification.The only explanation offered by Mr Fitzgerald for his interest was that he was sexually abused as a child but “didn’t think that viewing child porn was sexual abuse itself”.
Having said that he was not computer literate, Judge O’Kelly said that he did not accept these claims of Mr Fitzgerald or the that he was a man “with little knowledge of computers”,
Addressing Mark Nicholas, counsel for the defence, Judge O’Kelly said that it was clear that the accused man had a level of computer knowledge to know what a “temporary file folder was and that “specific forensic software could wipe histories”.
“He himself has admitted that he downloaded these images in order to enlarge them and admitted downloading them into a file he rather curiously called ‘Papist Humour’. He acknowledged he had seen images which in his opinion were less offensive but denied having seen the more obscenely graphic images, protesting rather unconvincingly that they didn’t ‘ring a bell’,” Judge O’Kelly said.
Prior to sentencing Gerard Fitzgerald to five months in prison, Judge O’Kelly asked Det Garda Hogan as to what scale these images ranked at and the court was told that although the quantity was small, their content was “at the most severe end of the scale”.
Gerard Fitzgerald’s name was placed on the sex offender’s register for five years.
