Gardaí fear child porn sex offender may have fled country

GARDAÍ are searching for a man convicted of downloading child pornography who hasn’t signed on the sex offenders’ register and may have left the country.

Garda sources confirmed yesterday that Colin Ashman had not complied with the law by providing them with a permanent address and they are investigating claims he may have gone to England with his German-born girlfriend.

It is an offence for such people to leave their permanent address for more than seven days without informing gardaí of where they are going.

Gardaí visited Ashman’s house at Tooreenfineen, near Rockchapel in north Cork, yesterday and he was not there. They have also checked an address in Tralee where he was known to stay with his girlfriend.

“We are making enquiries about his whereabouts and we have also contacted the police in Britain,” said a senior garda source.

Ashman, who is originally from Bristol, England, was given a two-year suspended sentence on July 6 after he was found to have 2,343 sexually explicit pictures of children on his computer.

His former partner and two children went to live in England some time ago.

The 31-year-old had consistently sneered his way through court appearances.

However, passing sentence, Judge Patrick J Moran said he considered the case to be borderline between custodial and non-custodial.

The judge said he was taking into account the fact that Ashman has pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, was of previous good character and had sought psychiatric help, which he received over a period of 14 months.

The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which criticised the leniency of Ashman’s sentence, said it wanted the law tightened. ISPCC chief executive Paul Gilligan said he was “extremely concerned” that Ashman hadn’t signed on the register.

He said that the law should be changed so that instead of a person having around 10 days to do so, they should have to “make themselves known to their local gardaí within either one or two days”.

“The reason the register exists is to monitor such people’s whereabouts and activities. It’s of extreme concern if somebody didn’t sign on,” said Mr Gilligan.

He said there was evidence that some people who downloaded child pornography from the internet posed a real risk to children. However, he said it was a positive move that gardaí had contacted their British counterparts on the issue.

The ISPCC has been critical of judges for leniency in cases of people caught downloading child porn.