A teenage boy was caught with child pornography when a hacker infected his laptop with malware in an attempt at sextortion, a court has heard.
The accused, now aged 22, pleaded guilty during his trial earlier this year to possessing child pornography at his home in County Mayo on June 6, 2018.
He cannot be named as he was 15 years’ old when gardaí found an extremely graphic video depicting child sexual abuse in the recycle bin of his mother’s laptop.
Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court heard that the illegal content was only discovered when the accused went to gardaí to complain that he had been hacked.
Passing sentence today/ WEDNESDAY, Judge Eoin Garavan said it was ironic that the actions of the accused led to his own prosecution, adding that had he not complained, it was likely the video may never have been found.
Judge Garavan set a headline sentence of four months, but reduced this to two months due to mitigating factors including the accused’s young age, immaturity and social isolation.
The 22-year-old was ordered to do 100 hours of community service within the next six months.
If this service is completed, Judge Garavan said he will discharge the two-month sentence when the case is finalised on November 7.
Detective Garda Paula Griffin told Pat Reynolds BL, prosecuting, that the accused had been engaged in exchanging sexual content and sharing explicit videos online with a hacker who was using an alias.
Gda Griffin said the hacker used the opportunity for sextortion, which she explained to the court as follows: ‘The hacker gets some sexualised replies from you and has enough to bribe you with, and then sends malware. In order to remove the malware, you have to give money.’
The court heard sextortion is a form of blackmail and that once the accused opened the video link on his mother’s laptop, he was unable to remove the virus.
‘The computer screen filled with the word ‘paedophile’ and images of spiders and the screen turned red. He told his mother he’d been hacked and handed the laptop in to gardaí for examination,’ said Gda Griffin.
The laptop was analysed by the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau and found to contain a video of child sexual abuse material, which had been moved to the laptop’s recycle bin two months prior to the hacking incident.
Gda Griffin said the video remained easily accessible to a laptop user.
The court heard the video was over seven minutes long and depicted two young boys, aged 10 or 11, engaged in sexual acts with each other and with an adult man.
The prosecuting garda described the video extremely graphic and on the extreme side of category 1 child sexual abuse material.
The accused was arrested and denied downloading sexually explicit material.
His trial began on March 3 this year, but he pleaded guilty to possession the following day.
Barry White SC, defending, cited a medical report showing how the accused suffered health issues from an early age which led to him becoming somewhat isolated from society.
The accused has no previous convictions and has not come to adverse garda attention since this offence.
He is deemed to be at low risk of reoffending and is currently doing a course, the court heard.
Judge Garavan accepted a request from the defence to remove the accused from the Sex Offenders’ List.
The judge said the material was extremely disturbing and that it was a significantly aggravating factor that there were two boys out there ‘traumatised by this appalling experience’.
‘These boys were used as essentially sex slaves,’ said the judge, describing the sexualisation of children in this most negative and violent way as ‘a grievous crime’.
The judge said the accused’s guilty plea came ‘extremely late in the day’ but took into consideration his social isolation and the ‘sad, lonely life he had as a result of his condition’.
‘I don’t want to stigmatise this man forever. He’s a different person now at 22,’ said Judge Garavan.