'One is one too many', judge tells Cork man, 73, caught with 136 child sexual abuse images
Accused received a three-year suspended sentence at Cork Circuit Criminal Court. Picture: Larry Cummins
An elderly West Cork man who was caught with child sexual abuse images and distributing one of the images was told by the sentencing judge that “even one is one too many”.
Judge Helen Boyle made this comment to 73-year-old Barry Moloney, of Ardán, Bandon, Co Cork, as she imposed a three-year suspended sentence on him at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.
“You were caught with 136 images of child pornography or what are child sexual abuse images. And the evidence is you distributed one image,” Judge Boyle said.
She added while the court heard in some cases of thousands of such images, this was not at the upper end of the scale but distributing even one image was too many. The judge stressed that it was not a victimless crime.
Paula McCarthy, defence barrister, said Barry Moloney cooperated with the investigation, had no previous convictions and signed a plea of guilty to the charges and was deemed by the probation service to be a low risk of re-offending, and he had not come to adverse attention since the matters came to light in 2019.
The barrister also described various health issues suffered by the defendant.
Ms McCarthy said the defendant had addressed his issues with a psychologist specialising in this area.
Sergeant Fintan Slater said gardaí went to the defendant’s house in 2019 and seized a number of electronic devices which were forensically analysed and found to contain a total of 136 images, and evidence he sent one image on Facebook to someone in the UK.
Thirty one images were the most serious category of children engaged in or witnessing sexual acts, and 74 were in the second category of children with anal or genital areas exposed.
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