Twitter tip-off led to extreme porn addict's arrest in Dublin, court told

Tom Tuite

A jewellery piercer was caught with sexual images of girls on his phone after Twitter notified gardaí he was viewing child abuse material on his social media account, a court has heard.

Adam Laycock, 31, of Dowland Road, Dublin 12, pleaded guilty to possessing eight child pornography images on his mobile phone on a date in January 2017 and will be sentenced later.

Judge Paula Murphy heard at Dublin District Court that the investigation stemmed from information provided to An Garda Síochána by Twitter, now named X, about a specific account.

Detective Garda Jason O’Carroll said the social media platform reported content “that they deemed to be child pornography”.

An internet trace led to his former address in Crumlin being searched, and he handed over his mobile phone.

Analysing it led to eight images being found. Two were of fully naked girls and six of girls in sexual poses.

The children were not identified, and the garda did not believe they were in Ireland.

The accused was questioned later because it took some time to analyse the devices, and he made admissions and confirmed the email address and Twitter handle he used.

The court heard he had no prior convictions.

Garda O’Carroll agreed with defence solicitor Philip Denieffe that when questioned, his client accepted the Twitter and email accounts were his and he stated that he had an addiction to pornography at the time.

The court heard he had been consuming child pornography online, and the content was getting “more and more extreme”.

Since then, Laycock had sought professional help.

Mr Denieffe said at the time his client suffered from a severe pornography addiction that had been going on for quite some time and had been consuming different types of content. Laycock was trolling the internet not just for child pornography but also for extreme content of different natures.

He furnished the court with a letter from his counsellor showing he had gone to sessions for two years and had addressed the issue.

The solicitor pleaded with the judge to note that the case went back some time and that he client had not come to garda notice since then.

Judge Murphy adjourned sentencing for a probation report to be furnished to the court in July.