Nurse gets six years for making child porn videos

A PSYCHIATRIC nurse who made video tapes of himself engaged in sexual activities with children from the ages of four to 13 has been jailed for six years.

Patrick Finbar Murphy gave the grandson of a couple he befriended eight bottles of Smirnoff Ice and recorded himself massaging the young boy’s body with cream and masturbating him as they both lay naked on a bed.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard the video also showed the young boy going to the toilet at one point and he could be heard getting sick.

Murphy also used a camcorder to film himself playing with a girl, aged seven, and two brothers, aged four and six, exposing their private parts to the camera as he baby-sat the three children in Co Sligo.

Mr George Birmingham SC, for Murphy, pleaded with Judge Des Hogan for leniency because his client was making the videos for his “own, perverted purposes” and was not selling or distributing them.

Murphy, aged 58, from Lower Beechwood Avenue, Ranelagh, but originally from Killarney, Co Kerry, admitted three counts of using a child for sexual exploitation on camcorder cassettes, video discs and digital discs at addresses in Dublin and Sligo between June 1, 1999, and October 31, 2001.

He also pleaded guilty to three counts of possessing child pornography on October 31, 2001.

Murphy had worked as a psychiatric nurse in Our Lady’s Psychiatric Hospital in Cork in 1975 and subsequently in children’s orphanges in Waterford and Cappoquin.

Judge Hogan said : “Under the guise of acts of kindness you breached that trust in pursuance of your own base motives and sexual gratification and I have no doubt that this will have a lasting affect on the children involved and their parents. I am aware you yourself have had an unhappy life but however scarred you must be yourself as a result of your upbringing, I am quite satisfied you knew what you were doing was wrong.”

Murphy was convicted of possessing indecent photographs in London and jailed for four months in 1995. The following year he was jailed for 18 months on three charges of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy. He served only nine months.

When caught, Murphy told gardaí: “I know what I’m doing is not normal but I can’t help myself.” He alleged he was sexually abused by a brother while at St Patrick’s Industrial School in Cork in the 1950s.