HOW CAN A PAEDOPHILE WITH 60,000 SEX IMAGES WALK FREE?
Judge: Pervert’s shaming is punishment enough
A RETIRED senior civil servant who was caught with some 60,000 sexual images and videos of children has walked free.
Brendan Phelan, 66, who worked in the Department of Health and Children, was spared jail by Judge Martin Nolan at the Dublin Circuit
Criminal Court yesterday.
The south Dublin-based paedophile’s suspended three-year sentence was met with shock and condemnation from abuse survivor groups yesterday.
The court heard that Phelan, who
was on a salary in the region of €77,849-€95,487 when he was a civil servant, did not appear to have had any romantic or sexual relationships throughout his life.
A source close to the investigation said when Phelan retired he essentially sat at home and viewed child sex images all day.
The court heard Phelan comes from a large family in Waterford, and news of his case was met with shock yesterday in the department he used to work in.
The former principal officer in the department with responsibility for children and health had pleaded guilty to one count of possessing child pornography at his home on March 26, 2013.
The sentence was condemned by the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre and abuse survivors group, One In Four, who said the children exploited to produce this type of material for paedophiles are ‘vulnerable’ and often ‘tortured’.
One In Four head Maeve Lewis told the Mail: ‘What really concerns me with these cases is if there is no supervision order imposed by the courts [on the offender], that means essentially they are able to continue and it poses a threat to children again, particularly when cases contain such a large file of images.’
Phelan, who lives in the upmarket leafy suburb of Blackrock, retired from the civil service aged 58. The court heard Phelan’s home was raided five years ago in 2013 but he was only charged last year due to a lack of resources in the investigating Garda unit.
Last night the Department of Health said it was ‘shocked to hear about this issue and only became aware of the case today’. Phelan, of Merrion Grove, admitted to gardaí that he had a ‘fair bit’ of child pornography relating to young boys when his home was raided five years ago.
Most of the material was ‘naturist’, the court heard, but others showed pre-pubescent boys engaged in sexual behaviour.
A source close to the case told the Mail: ‘He was like a lamb when gardaí arrived.
‘He did not resist in any way and fully co-operated. It seems that following his retirement, he literally seems to have sat at home and spent his time fulltime downloading child porn.’
Handing down the suspended sentence, Judge Nolan said the conviction would bring shame on Phelan and his family. He also noted he would be on the Sex Offenders Register.
The judge took into account a number of mitigating factors, including the nature of the images – the majority of which were placed in the lowest category of seriousness by gardaí – his cooperation and the fact that Phelan did not produce or distribute the material elsewhere.
Sentencing Phelan, Judge Martin Nolan also noted that there was an ‘unfortunate delay’ in bringing the case to court due to lack of Garda resources.
Senior sources within An Garda Síochána last night acknowledged that a ‘significant’ backlog in vital technology to examine sexual images of children existed in 2013 but said that this ‘problem no longer exists’.
After a tip-off from Canadian officials, gardaí raided Phelan’s home in March 2013, where they seized his computer, a laptop and five external hard drives, among other equipment. A suitcase of DVDs found in Phelan’s bedroom was also seized. When the material was eventually examined four years later, gardaí found 58,585 child sex images and 1,046 movies. The majority of these files were ‘naturist’ and concentrated on young boys’ genitalia, Garda Woods said. Others were of a more serious nature.
Defence counsel, Philipp Rahn BL, said his client went to university and had a good career. He said Phelan is extremely remorseful for his behaviour and has attended counselling and rehabilitated himself.
But last night Noeline Blackwell of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre called for sentencing guidelines to stop sex offenders being spared prison. She told the Mail: ‘We need to have a more informed set of guidelines for the public about what the judge took into account. It must be said loud and clear that in this case there were victims and the victims were the children who were photographed and their bodies were exploited in order to produce the pornography.
‘This is not a crime without consequences.’
And reacting last night, Maeve Lewis of One in Four, said: ‘When we talk about child pornography, we are talking about people who pay for images of children who are being sexually abused.
‘These are children who are being tortured and some of the most vulnerable. It’s the most serious offence in my mind.’ Comment – Page 12
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‘It’s the most serious offence’