Former school principal convicted of possessing child porn

A retired secondary school principal was given a ten-month jail sentence today for having 289 child pornographic images and six such video files on his computer two years ago.

Judge Con O’Leary suspended the last seven months of that sentence at Cork District Court on Anthony Caniffe (aged 62) who had the child pornography at his home at Rosegarth, Donnybrook, Douglas, Cork, on October 16, 2008. He has since moved to Scotland.

Judge Con O’Leary said, “He was an educated man who took advantage of the fact that these children (in the pornographic images) had been quite brutally abused.”

The judge refused a defence application by barrister Sinead Behan to suspend the entirety of the sentence.

“He was dealing with children all his life. He knows how vulnerable they are, he knows young people are hurt in relatively minor incidents. He knew how they take things to heart and how they are damaged and he went and did this,” Judge O’Leary said.

The images with which Caniffe was caught included pictures of six to 12-year-old children in acts of oral sex and acts of penetrative sexual intercourse and other less severe images.

Det. Garda Michael Hogan previously testified that the forensic evidence was that the images and video clips had been downloaded on to the defendant’s computer from child pornography sites and that there had been no evidence of purchasing the material by cash or credit card transactions.

Defence barrister, Sinead Behan, said there was no evidence of the material being distributed by the defendant to any one else or of him taking such photographs.

The jail sentence is to be appealed. Caniffe’s name was put on the Sex Offenders Register for five years.