Man jailed after police find 30,000 porn pics

Man jailed after police find 30,000 porn pics

21 December 2011

A MAN found with nearly 30,000 indecent images of children has been jailed for a year.

Francis Murphy (42) was arrested following a search of his Drumaness home on January 17, 2010 and sentenced on 30 specimen counts at Downpatrick Crown Court on Thursday.

Among the 29,652 still and moving images made and stored on various media storage devices, 170 were categorised as level 4 images and 16 as level 5 — the most disturbing of their kind.

Prosecuting lawyer David McDowell said the images were thought to include footage taken in public places, including crowds swimming and from what appeared to be a bedroom window on to a children’s playground.

The court heard Murphy, whose address was given as Irish Street, Downpatrick, had at one time lived at Red Row, Drumaness.

He said there was no evidence of any dissemination of the images but noted they were filed in an “organised manner”.

Defence barrister Alan Blackburn said his client fully co-operated with police and pleaded guilty at the first opportunity.

He said Murphy, who had not engaged in previous offending of this nature, had expressed “deep shame”.

“He now sees that this behaviour is unacceptable to the community,” said Mr. Blackburn, who noted a Probation report did not deem him a risk to the public.

“He is a man who has lived a very virtuous life,” he said, arguing that this “dark side” was just one aspect of his character.

Judge David Smyth QC, imposed a 28 month sentence in total, 16 months of which is to be spent on licence. He said there was no suggestion Murphy was involved in the production of indecent images, but said he was imposing a harsher sentence than guidelines dictated due to a number of aggravating features.

He said these were due to the age of the children in the images, some of whom were as young as five, the sheer volume of the images, and their systematic organisation.

Judge Smyth said he was also concerned that Murphy had not accepted the extent of his paedophilic tendencies from psychiatric reports prepared for the court.

“It is just not acceptable or believable or credible that he could access these images without having a serious interest sexually in children,” he said. “He has not accepted that.”

Banned from working with children, Murphy was also ordered to sign the sex offenders register.