Man caught with more than 35,000 child sex abuse images at Cork home jailed for 18 months

The man caught with more than 35,000 child sex abuse images at his home in Clonakilty was jailed today for 18 months as the judge stressed that none of the child victims depicted in the material could be asked in court how they are doing now.

Judge Sinead Behan stressed that it is not a victimless crime and said in relation to the amount of children depicted in this material that one could only imagine the scale of abuse behind the images, if one considered the numbers by reference to the average number of children in a school, for instance.

Referring to the 49-year-old accused man in this case, Paul Quinlan, the judge said that the people drawn into the internet and into the dark web were sometimes people with their own vulnerabilities.

“The internet and the dark web is a monster that also preys on individuals who access it,” Judge Behan said.

A sentence of three years, with half of it suspended, was then imposed on Paul Quinlan as a result of the 2021 seizure of images from computer and phone equipment found during a search when he was residing at Tawnies Lower, Clonakilty, County Cork.

Judge Behan thanked Detective Garda Brian Morris and said: “I would like to acknowledge the work of the gardaí. 

“It is a somewhat invisible crime and takes a lot of work.” 

Defence senior counsel, Ray Boland, said that it could be difficult for someone like the defendant to reintegrate in their local community after they were convicted of a crime like this.

Judge Behan acknowledged this and said: “It is more difficult to integrate. There is a stigma where they invoke the judgement of society - that is more impactful than other crimes that people may be involved in.” 

Detective Garda Brian Morris testified that officers of the Protective Services Unit of West Cork went to the home of 49-year-old Paul Quinlan at Tawnies Lower, Clonakilty, County Cork, on April 29, 2021, having received notification of the downloading of child pornography by the accused.

The detective said there was full cooperation in that he admitted to gardaí as soon as they arrived that he had child pornography and he also showed them the main computer on which pictures and videos were stored.

Over 35,000 images and 150 videos were found, of which the most serious category of material amounted to 4,896, the remainder being category 2. 

Category 1 relates to children witnessing or engaging in sex with adults. 

The second category is of exposure of anal or genital areas of children.

The detective said Paul Quinlan was not distributing the material but was searching for it, including dark web searches to obtain material.

Mr Boland said that the total number of images – though very large in any event – was closer to 20,000 as many images were duplicated.

The defence senior counsel said that the defendant initially accessed the material accidentally but then did so deliberately. Det Gda Morris said there was evidence of extensive searching over a prolonged period and the use of various acronyms that would only be known by people familiar with this kind of material online.