Former Central Bank officer sentenced for possessing child porn images

A retired Central Bank senior administration officer who was in possession of hundreds of thousands of child porn images and videos has been sentenced at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to four years and fined €5,000.

Raphael Farina had stored the files on his personal computer and on hundreds of discs in a cardboard box and in a brown envelope.

Farina (aged 65) of Spranger’s Yard, Crow Street, Temple Bar had pleaded not guilty to three counts of possession of child pornography at his home on June 6, 2007.

He was found guilty of having material which included more than 100 images of babies by a jury after 20 minutes of deliberations on day one of the trial.

His defence counsel did not contest any of the evidence against him during the trial and told the judge they were only contesting the validity of the search warrant used by gardaí.

Detective Garda Gerald Keen of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, told prosecuting counsel, Ms Monika Leech BL, that gardaí called to Farina’s home with a search warrant as part of an investigation into child pornography.

Farina let the search take place and admitted immediately that he possessed the material saying, “there’s no point in denying it”.

Farina, who has no previous convictions, admitted he had been downloading images since 1997.

Det Gda Keane examined Farina’s computer where he found 150 user-generated folders and 68 default folders named “New Folder” which contained pictures and video files and graphic images of sex abuse on children aged three years and younger.

“There were very few images of teenagers and well over 10,000 pornographic exhibit files,” said Det Gda Keane.

There were 4,370 images depicting children’s genitals and 2,076 depicting sexual activity including rape. He also found nearly 1,000 encrypted files which had “quite complicated” password protection.

Det Gda Keane then examined a box and envelope which contained 207 CDs, 8 DVDs and 23 floppy disks. He said it was not possible to say exactly how many files these contained but it was between 100,000 and 700,000.

He said many of the files consisted of instructions from “paedophile groups” on how to download and encrypt the files.

Det Gda Keane agreed with Ms Aileen Donnelly SC, defending, that there could be four times as many files as Farina had originally thought as the files copy themselves.

He agreed with Ms Donnelly that there was no evidence of distribution of the pornographic files and images and there was no evidence that there was any contact between Farina and anyone in the images.

“He has an obsession with decrypting files,” explained Ms Donnelly.

Ms Donnelly told the court that Farina had worked in the Central Bank as a senior administrative officer since the early 1960s and retired from his job the day after he was arrested by gardaí.

“He is separated from his wife and has a number of children and is now in a relationship with a woman in Thailand who has gone missing with her child. He has been engaging with the police in Thailand to find out where they are as he believes they have been abducted,” said Ms Donnelly.

“He co-operated fully with the gardaí and it was only the validity of the warrant he was contesting,” she added.

“He is very aware of the damage he has done to his family and regrets that,” she said.

Giving a character reference, Farina’s friend and neighbour Vinnie Hall, a retired Community Welfare Officer, explained that Farina is “hard working, generous, loyal and now has the possibility of losing two families.”

“Everyone is multifaceted and that was just one of his facets. I don’t buy into it that he deserves what he gets as every single person in this room has something to be ashamed of and to hide. We are all human,” said Mr Hall.

Judge Patricia Ryan declared Farina a sex offender and said Farina “did not prolong the case in any meaningful way and there was no evidence of distribution.”

“This is a crime of very serious nature and the quantity and types of child porn is serious and merits a custodial sentence,” she said handing down the four-year sentence and €5,000 fine.