" A man who was caught with thousands of child abuse images on his laptop while gardaí investigated harassment allegations against him has avoided jail.

John Whelan, 47, received a four-year suspended sentence in December 2012 after he admitted harassing eight women at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire. Gardaí found the abuse images after he handed his laptop over for the investigation.

Judge Martin Nolan heard that Whelan had installed a hidden camera in the shower of a ladies’ locker room. He had 885 images of women on his laptop, saved in folders named after victims.

Dublin circuit criminal court was told yesterday that during that investigation in 2012, Whelan’s laptop was forwarded to the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau after suspected child abuse images were discovered. The reports did not come back until 2016 due to a lack of resources.

Whelan, of Farrenboley Park, Windy Arbour, Dublin, pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography at his home on March 20, 2012.

Garda Sergeant Colm Ó Giolláin said more than 5,000 child abuse images were discovered on Whelan’s laptop, including six that depicted explicit child sex images. Most of the others were of children exposing themselves. The remaining images were animations.

Sergeant Ó Giolláin agreed with Vincent Heneghan SC, for the defence, that Whelan had not come to garda attention since his appearance before Judge Nolan in 2012. He accepted that he spent his time caring for his elderly mother and agreed with a suggestion from counsel that he was “not a concern to gardaí”. Mr Heneghan said the images were downloaded between 2009 to 2012 and that six of them were “horrific”.

Counsel submitted that the case could have been dealt with at the same time as the harassment case but because of a lack of resources gardaí could not analyse the material. Judge Nolan said because the garda unit was overloaded, the case had been hanging over Whelan for four years. Referring to case law, he said higher courts had found that a suspended sentence was acceptable in situations in which there was no evidence that the images were distributed, the defendant had pleaded guilty and lacked relevant convictions.

Judge Nolan said he was satisfied that the chance of Whelan reoffending was low. He suspended a three-year sentence on strict conditions, including that Whelan engage with the Probation Service for 18 months."

Link to TheTimes UK Article:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/paedophile-john-whelan-caught-with-child-abuse-on-his-laptop-avoids-prison-w3qrxghhb