Former priest and child abuser jailed on porn charge

A former priest and convicted child abuser has been jailed for three years for possession of large amounts of child pornography.

Oliver O’Grady, 66, had thousands of explicit images of children stored on computers and USB drives, some depicting victims as young as two. Gardaí also found over six hours of child pornography videos and over 500 pages of online discussions on the subject of child pornography.

O’Grady, formerly of Charlemont House in Dublin 2, was sentenced to 14 years in California for abusing children while serving as a priest. He was deported back to Ireland in 2001 after serving seven years of his sentence.

The images were discovered after O’Grady left his laptop on an Aer Lingus flight. A staff member examined the computer and alerted gardaí after coming across the files.

O’Grady pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to three counts of possessing child pornography at Dublin Airport on February 15, 2010, and at Citi Hostel on Charlemont Street and Elephant Storage Unit in Tallaght on December 10, 2010.

Detective Garda Gerard Keane of the Paedophile Investigations Unit told prosecuting counsel, Mr Kerida Naidoo BL, that he found nearly 280,000 images on O’Grady’s laptops and hard drives, the majority of them showing children in sexual poses. He also found over 1,000 child pornography video files which totalled over six hours in length.

An audio file was also discovered. It began with O’Grady discussing religious matters, but after several minutes he began discussing the sexual abuse of a male child before returning to the topic of religion.

Det Gda Keane also found over 500 pages of chat logs which showed O’Grady’s “serious fixation” on children. Most of the data had already been deleted but Garda computer experts were able to recover it.

On February 15, 2010 O’Grady was returning to Dublin from Amsterdam on an Aer Lingus flight. He left his laptop on the plane and it was put in the lost property department by staff.

Aer Lingus rules state that if lost property is not claimed within three months, the worker who found it is allowed to keep it. When a staff member claimed possession of the computer and examined its contents they found the illegal files and alerted gardaí.

Gardaí went to the hostel where O’Grady was staying and he showed them to a locker containing several USB devices and an external hard drive. He also told them about more computer equipment in a storage facility in Tallaght. All the devices contained illegal files.

In interview O’Grady admitted the equipment was his but replied “no comment” to other questions.

Judge Martin Nolan said “if people didn’t download child pornography there is a good chance that those children would not be abused in the first place”.

He said O’Grady has a serious problem and prison in America has not rehabilitated him. He took into account his early guilty plea and limited co-operation with gardaí before jailing him for three years.

Jeff Anderson, the lawyer who represented two of O’Grady’s victims in America and succeeded in securing a $30 million settlement against his diocese, said the defrocked priest’s conviction was welcome but the fact he was a proven re-offender provoked fear.

“We continue to be deeply concerned that Oliver O’Grady will carry on his predatory ways and put other kids in danger if he is ever released from prison.”