Jury acquits school teacher of possessing child porn
Thomas Keane, aged 43, of Newtown, Drangan, Thurles, pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to knowingly having child pornography stored on his computer at his home on April 9, 2007.
Earlier, the jury heard that Mr Keane accepted in interview when it was suggested to him by gardaí that one image found on his computer was in breach of legislation on the depiction of minors.
Detective Sergeant Thomas Judge said that Mr Keane had agreed that a male featured in one image found on the computer appeared to be about 16 years old, but added that the majority of gay models tended to look young.
Mr Keane claimed that he had been sent the picture in question through an instant messaging service.
He denied ever having used the internet to either view or download child pornography.
Mr Keane did not accept that most of the images found by gardaí on his computer were of male in their early teens.
Det Sgt Judge told Gerardine Small BL, prosecuting, he had a warrant to search Mr Keane’s home on April 9, 2007, where he seized a laptop, 49 CDs and DVDs and three floppy disks.
He said Mr Keane co-operated fully with gardaí and consented to an initial interview at his home, in which he confirmed his email address and informed gardaí that he was a regular visitor to Gaydar, a dating website.
He said he had been in gay relationships for 10 years and was “generally interested in guys in their early 20s”.
A detective sergeant who analysed the images found on Mr Keane’s laptop agreed with Colman Cody BL, for the defence, that 18,000 images were found on the machine.
These covered “a multitude of different types of pictures, including old family snaps, graduation and deb balls, social nights out, rural landscapes and animals”, said the detective sergeant.
He further agreed that, out of all of those images, gardaí showed 11 to Mr Keane in interview, suggesting that they were in breach of the legislation and depicted males under 17 years old.
He also accepted that, following further analysis, “it was the state’s contention that only two images found on Mr Keane’s computer constituted child pornography”.
The detective sergeant accepted a suggestion from Mr Cody that it was Mr Keane’s defence that “his computer and the images on it are those of a gay man, not a person interested in child pornography”.
