Jailed sex offender is ‘a danger to society’

A convicted sex offender who admitted he has a compulsion to accessing child pornography has been jailed after a judge said he is a danger to society.

Anthony Keogh, aged 53, who searched the internet using terms such as “child sex stories” and “underage sex stories”, was caught with 12,756 images of children engaged in sexual acts with adults and in various states of undress.

His previous convictions include a six-year term with three suspended for abusing a child in Limerick between 2004 and 2006.

The suspended portion of the term handed down in Limerick Circuit Criminal Court in 2008 had expired the previous month when Keogh pleaded guilty to the current charge last March.

He was convicted of a second offence of sexually assaulting another child in July 1997 and a charge of indecent exposure to a minor in December 1989.

Keogh pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of the images in his home on Leinster Rd, Dublin, on September 5, 2012.

“He seems to have an attraction to children and has difficulty controlling that attraction so he is a danger to society as he currently stands before me,” Judge Martin Nolan said before sentencing Keogh to four years with one suspended.