Man, 43, to be jailed for accessing online folder of child sex abuse images

A man who accessed an online cloud folder where he kept hundreds of child sex abuse images and videos after avoiding imprisonment for a similar offence is to be jailed for 12 months.

Bryan Dunne, 43, of Hyde Park Lodge, Killucan, Co. Westmeath, pleaded guilty to possessing 745 images and videos at his home on September 19, 2023.

The offences, contrary to the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act, happened two years after he received a suspended three years and nine months sentence with strict terms.

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Judge Keenan Johnson heard at Mullingar Circuit Criminal Court that Dunne admitted he was sexually attracted to prepubescent girls.

The abuse material was in a folder he had since 2018 in his Dropbox account for remote storage of data online.

He accessed it in June last year, and it contained explicit images and recordings of girls aged seven to 14 with genitalia exposed or being sexually abused.

In April 2021, he had already received a three-year and nine-month suspended sentence for similar offences for distributing child abuse material in 2016 and 2017. It was suspended for 10 years, and he complied with a condition to complete the Safer Lives programme for sex offenders and went to counselling.

However, he told gardai that when he opened the Dropbox folder in the middle of the night, “things were getting on top of him,” and he had wanted “to end it all”.

Dunne wept in court, telling Judge Keenan Johnson that he had the folder since 2018, at a time he was heavily abusing cocaine. He claimed that he opened it once following his conviction while looking for other non-illegal images.

He said it happened on a night he planned to take his life after learning new information connected to sexual abuse he suffered as a child.

Dunne, who had trained in home heating installation, had also been owed pay for a home job but did not get paid and was upset he would not have spending money for a family holiday.

The court heard he had been drinking, another breach of the suspended sentence conditions because alcohol was a “trigger” for his behaviour.

He was planning to end it all and took tablets and alcohol and did not expect to wake up the next morning. He told gardai, “I tried to kill myself. Life keeps kicking me off the ladder,” and he opened the Dropbox folder.

Detective Sergeant Eric Naughton of the Divisional Protective Service Unit in Athlone Garda station said Dunne’s arrest came after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the United States detected that the Dropbox file with abuse images and recordings had been accessed.

NCMEC found the device’s IP (internet protocol) address and an associated email address used to access the material. The information was passed on to gardai, who could link it to Dunne at a previous address in Castleknock, Dublin 15. In September 2023, when gardai went to his Killucan home, he still had the folder in his online account.

Judge Johnson noted he made no effort to delete the material.

He delayed the sentence start date to allow Dunne to put his affairs in order and report to Mullingar Garda station at midday on July 31 to be brought to prison to serve his term.

He also faces the risk of the earlier suspended sentencing being re-entered to court and activated to run consecutively.

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