Readers are warned that these articles contain graphic descriptions.
The rise of the internet has sparked a massive increase in the trading of child pornography by Irish people. The figures are staggering, the images truly shocking, reports Ali Bracken, Crime Correspondent.

THIS WEEKEND in towns across the length and breadth of the country, men are sitting in the comfort of their homes downloading and swapping images of children being raped. Some of the children are still infants. Others are older and the pain and realisation of what’s happening to them is visible on their young faces. In one of the most graphic photographs ever detected, an attempt is made to orally rape a newborn baby still attached to its mother by the umbilical cord.

Some men (and possibly women too) are sitting alone in darkened rooms as they download these images across Ireland. Others may be gazing out the window at children playing on the street.

“The depth of this problem we have in Ireland is beyond shocking,” says Dr Niall Muldoon, national clinical director of CARI (Children at Risk in Ireland). “This has to be a wake-up call. The people who are doing this are living in communities all over the country. They are our neighbours, people we all know.”

In the first six months of this year, there were almost 5,000 detections of people downloading or trading in child pornography in Ireland on peer-to-peer networks (P2P). Some of these individuals swapped and downloaded child porn hundreds of times within a few weeks.

In the first three months of the year, more than 1,000 computers across the country each month were downloading or trading these illegal images with people online all over the world. Following an RTé Prime Time Investigates programme at the end of May, the number of computers in Ireland downloading or trading in child porn dropped to 235 in the first half of June. This decrease is being attributed to fears by those involved in this illegal activity that they will be detected.

Some people participating in this depraved criminal activity must have been glued to their computers almost continuously – one Dublin-based individual’s PC was detected 315 times in January downloading or sharing images of sexual abuse of children. There is an undisputed link between people who access child pornography and paedophilia.

The most worrying development in the child porn industry at present is the sharp rise in people with an interest in photos of children being sodomised participating in this activity on peer-to-peer networks.

It works like this: P2P file-sharing networks allow users access each other’s computer hard drives to share files. These networks act as online communities where members with similar interests share, search and download files which are located on their computers. Each member of the community has its own collection of files which it shares with others. All the members of the community have the same software, so enabling the transferring of files.

Once installed, community members can start downloading files from each other’s computers. The members of each group can be from anywhere in the world. It is possible to download a single file, an entire directory, or an entire hard drive. P2P is predominantly used for the sharing of music and movie files. But it is also perfect for the distribution of child pornography.

Sheer scale is horrifying

Software company TLO, based in Florida, has created a software analysis system that can analyse if people are trading or downloading other people’s child pornography images on peer-to-peer systems. It provided the Sunday Tribune with a snapshot of the situation in Ireland – in terms of activity of those sharing and downloading child porn images on P2P networks – from January until the middle of June. The sheer scale of activity is horrifying. But what makes it even worse is that this is not the full picture.

“The actual activity in child pornography I’m sure is actually much higher. As well as the thousands detected by TLO on peer-to-peer, that’s only one way people access child porn. The other popular way is by buying child pornography on the internet. The rise in ‘pay as you go’ credit cards has ensured people can continue to do this,” says John Carr of the European NGO Alliance for Child Safety Online (ENACSO).

‘The situation is far worse’

He has been an adviser to the British government and the UN on safeguarding young people’s use of the internet and associated new technologies. “I’m afraid the actual situation in Ireland is probably far worse than your figures show. While there has been a rise of sharing of child porn on peer-to-peer networks, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) estimates that a significant proportion of the child porn industry is commercial. So more people are still selling pictures of kids online rather than sharing them on peer-to-peer.”

The internet has facilitated the child porn industry to a greater extent than any other illegal business in the world. While people running websites selling these images of children are continually prosecuted and have their sites shut down, they reappear online in different guises and regularly change web addresses. Most of the developed world including the UK – but not Ireland – has blocked access to child porn websites. The government has promised that legislation is on the way to bring Ireland up to standard with most of the rest of the modern world in this regard.

But even though access to child porn websites to buy images is still possible in Ireland, those interested in doing so know these sites are monitored by gardaí. This is another reason why peer-to-peer trading in these illegal photos and videos is so popular.

People think it’s undetectable even though gardaí have now been trained in how to monitor this relatively new activity. The use of personal credit cards to buy child porn is also fast disappearing. It’s seen as a ‘rookie mistake’ nowadays. A garda probe in 2002, Operation Amethyst, led to over 100 arrests and several prosecutions.

Circuit Court judge Brian Curtin and celebrity chef Tim Allen were among those prosecuted for buying child porn with their own credit cards. Because of this – and as people sharing child porn delude themselves that by not paying for it they are not committing a crime – people in Ireland who wish to look at images of sodomised children have embraced P2P file sharing.

“Because a lot of the websites selling child porn have been outlawed, this has forced a lot of people to trade and barter for child porn,” says Steve Racioppo, chief operating officer at TLO. “This has meant that the trading and downloading of child porn on peer-to-peer networks has really flourished. It’s basically people seeking out other like-minded people online and forging communities.”

TLO also monitors activities in chat rooms and other internet-based communications. It provides this service free of charge to 36 countries worldwide and across many of the US states as part of its philanthropic ethos.

Recently, a detective from the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Investigation Unit underwent a training seminar in Denmark by TLO. Essentially, this officer will now be able to use the company’s software to detect when, and exactly where, people in Ireland are using peer-to-peer networks to download and share child pornography.

“The technology we provide is just a tool used by law enforcements worldwide to monitor the situation. After we provide them with the data, extensive police work must take place in terms of building cases against people. In a way, what we provide law-enforcement agencies with are very good leads. But we have provided data to police all over the world that has led to arrests and prosecutions,” adds Racioppo.

“The gardaí are now involved and we hope that information we provide to them will be useful. The data we provide is people trading and downloading child porn involving children eight years and under. If we were monitoring it for children under 18, can you imagine how high our figures would be?”

A disturbing consequence of like-minded people forging online communities and sharing child porn rather than buying it anonymously from websites ensures that people with similar urges to abuse children begin to communicate regularly.

Read more »

12 survivors of institutions get names cleared

By Conor Ryan, Political Correspondent

Monday, August 02, 2010

Justice Minister Dermot Ahern has issued 12 certificates to former residents of the institutions who had carried criminal records because of the state’s treatment of them.

This was because the 1908 law, which established borstals and juvenile homes, used the courts to take children into care.

The figure was revealed in the Children’s Minister Barry Andrew’s first report on the implementation plan for the 99 recommendations arising from the Ryan report. The progress report approved by the Cabinet last month showed the most recent certificate of innocence was finalised on May 25.

It said the 12 people had written to the minister requesting such certs and that the courts had agreed to deal with their applications as a priority.

The progress report also revealed the pace at which former residents are seeking the truth about their own care has not let up in the year since the publication of the Ryan report.

In 2009 the Department of Education received 478 Freedom of Information applications from former residents to have their personal records released. Already this year 319 similar requests have been made.

However, the report also identified a number of areas where the Government’s plans to implement the recommendations have stalled.

Many of these relate to the responsibilities of the Health Service Executive.

The HSE had been expected to carry out a full national review of its policy of putting homeless children directly into accommodation without being referred to the health authorities.

However, this audit will not take place until the autumn.

The HSE was also to carry out an audit of all resources, finance and staff in the childcare area across all the various agencies involved in the sector.

This was not achieved for the target of February 2010.

The progress report said there was a lack of “consistency, co-ordination and inter-agency focus” in the area of professional training for people working with children. But this was being addressed by the HSE, it said.

It revealed Mr Andrews is considering expanding the powers of the Health Information and Quality Authority to give it a wider remit over child protection. This change of policy was offered up as the reason HIQA’s social services inspectors had not begun independent inspections of all residential centres and foster services.

Child welfare groups have criticised the pace of progress on the implementation plan and in May joined together to pressure the Government to act.

Meanwhile, Andrew Madden, who was abused as a child in his Dublin parish, is considering running for the Dáil and said he is open to discussions with any party except Fianna Fáil.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, August 02, 2010

Victims of abuse at the hands of priests in Ireland are not satisfied by the Pope’s letter of apology.

Marie Collins is still a practising Catholic despite years of pain and frustration fighting the Irish Catholic hierarchy.

In 1960, when she was 13, she was sexually abused by a chaplain at Crumlin Hospital Dublin – but didn’t report the abuse until 1995.

Then, she said, “All I got was lies and deceit from the archdiocese (of Dublin). I was bullied and threatened.”

Last year she discovered from a report by Judge Yvonne Murphy into the Dublin dioscese’s handling of sex abuse allegations that the archbishop at the time knew of complaints about her abuser – and so did the Irish police. But nothing was done and the priest continued abusing children in his care.

A softly-spoken woman of 63, Mrs Collins was not expecting much of the Pope’s long-awaited apology yesterday. But even so, she was visibly disappointed.

“I had no great hope for this letter but there’s still a sense of let-down,” she said. “The Pope blames it all on the secularisation of Irish society and the misinterpretation of canon law. He takes no responsibility at all for the Vatican’s role in the cover up of abuse. There’s no acknowledgement that it’s a worldwide problem for the Church, or that victims weren’t just ignored, they were bullied into silence.”

Married with one son, Mrs Collins has devoted most of the last decade to pressuring the Irish Church to come clean on sex abuse and now campaigns for the Irish sex abuse victim support group, One in Four.

She said the battle had damaged her faith.

“It’s a struggle but I’m trying to hang on,” she said. “I need something more to hang on to. I need a sense of morality.”

Paddy Doyle, 59, one of the first victims of abuse in Catholic-run institutions in Ireland to go public, has none of Mrs Collins’ quiet sadness. As the letter was read out, 21 years after the publication of his harrowing autobiography The God Squad, he was still apoplectic with rage.

The Pope’s words were the “same old dribble that’s been coming out for years”, he said. “He hasn’t accepted his own responsibility for what happened at all.”

Mr Doyle was a four-year-old orphan when dispatched to St Michael’s Industrial School, at Cappoquin, County Wexford – where he was viciously assaulted and sexually abused. He soon developed severe physical disabilities, a result, he believes of the trauma he endured. By the age of 10 he was paralysed.

Now a non-Christian, he has no fear of labelling the Irish bishops “the lads in frocks” who spent most of their recent visit to the Vatican “kissing rings”.

“When will they come out of the 12th century or wherever they live and look at the real issues, the broken lives of the people who were raped and ——– and starved by deviants and perverts in their ranks?” he said.

According to a government report published last year, children at his school were routinely sexually and physically abused and severely underfed.

That report was the second of three damning recent investigations into clerical and religious abuse of children in Ireland.

What started as a trickle of barely-believed allegations in the 1980s has become a torrent of ever more horrific revelations, of paedophile priests abusing children with impunity and of obsessive efforts by the Irish Catholic hierarchy to silence victims.

There has also been a constant drip of court documents and victim testimony, giving the sense that even the official version of events might still be the tip of the iceberg.

Last week it emerged that the primate of all Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, had interviewed two children in 1975 about their abuse at the hands of a notorious paedophile priest. Cardinal Brady’s involvement came to light only through court documents lodged by one of the victims, who is now suing him, claiming he made her swear an oath of secrecy.

The priest was imprisoned for child rape in 1994 – but in the intervening years is believed to have abused 90 children. Last year’s Murphy Report identified 2000 victims of clerical sex abuse in Dublin diocese, and described the efforts of Church authorities to cover up allegations.

Outrage over the behaviour of church authorities has now reached a tipping point. Before publication of the Pope’s letter there were daily calls for Cardinal Brady to resign and demands for a mass clear-out of Irish bishops. On Wednesday, St Patrick’s Day, there were fresh allegations that the Bishop of Derry was involved in the cover-up of a rape case.

At mass yesterday in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, Cardinal Brady asked the congregation to pray that the Pope’s intervention would be the beginning of a great season of rebirth and hope in the Irish church.

But while the Catholic hierarchy still has its supporters in Ireland, many practising Catholics are appalled by events. The Pope’s letter appears only to have fuelled their anger.

Eithne MacDaeid, 53, from Bettystown, County Meath, is a regular mass-goer and member of a prayer group. She said she was outraged by the Pope’s remarks, particularly his suggestion that the problem arose from the secularisation of Irish society. “He seems to think he can blame the Irish people for this. It’s nothing to do with our lack of faith. This is a problem for the church across the world,” she said.

Colm O’Gorman, 43, who was abused as a teenager by a priest in his home diocese of Ferns, found some small comfort in the words of the Pope. The language is more accessible compared to what was used previously, he says. “Certainly the apology is fulsome,” he added.

But the Pope’s recommendations were “laughable”, he said. “He wants us all to go back to Church and pray. I’m not disputing the power of prayer but he doesn’t seem to get the reality of this – the countless suicides and the devastation of the faith, and not just among the victims.”

By Carissa Casey in Dublin
Published: 7:45AM GMT 21 Mar 2010

Telegraph.co.uk