Former HSE manager jailed for 6 years for distributing child sexual abuse images – The Irish Times

A former HSE manager who, along with other users of the messaging app Kik, fantasized about raping children and making them cry was sentenced to six years in prison by a county court judge on Monday.

Peter O’Malley (47), of Hawthorne Place, Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, appeared before Judge Eoin Garavan at Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court for sentencing.

O’Malley, who opened Covid clinics in Mayo and Roscommon at the height of the pandemic, pleaded guilty at a previous trial to ten sample charges of distributing and possessing child pornography.

Some of the photographs were described by Det Gda Paula Griffin of Mayo’s gardai unit as images of “extreme depravity”.

The crimes took place over a 22-month period, from January 2020 to October 2021.

O’Malley, an administrator for the online messaging site Kik, asked one user if he could have sex with his 12-year-old daughter.

On another occasion, he described how he wanted to insult the two-year-old child of a user he was talking to.

The court was previously told O’Malley knowingly engaged in five online conversations with children under the age of 18 from Co Cork and Co Kilkenny.

His personal phone contained 128,791 images, of which approximately 70 percent were pornographic, legal and illegal. The phone contained 249 images of child pornography, including 62 category 1 images and 44 category 2 images.

Category 1 images included images of children between 3 and 17 years of age engaging in or witnessing sexually explicit acts, including children who had been sexually abused by adults.

Category 2 images included content that showed children’s genitals exposed and in sexually suggestive positions.

At today’s hearing, Judge Garavan said O’Malley was an administrator/coordinator of the Kik website and noted the explicit and lewd nature of the photographs over a 22-month period.

He said the defendants had largely demonstrated a persistent obsession with pornography and exploitation.

Judge Garavan added that as an administrator of the Kik app since September 2020, the defendant himself decided who could be part of the group.

It was not cash, the judge noted, and it was not a business enterprise. Providing photographs created a market, or indeed an incentive, to purchase additional materials, which overall led to children around the world being abused and photographed.

Describing the images as highly graphic, Judge Garavan said some victims were screaming and crying.

He continued: “It would break anyone’s heart to see these children – I haven’t seen the photographs, but I accept their description – who were very upset or worried about being penetrated or even being the victim of other sexual activity.”

The judge added that the defendant was ultimately part of some sort of pedophile ring – not through sexual assault, but through the sharing and distribution of sexually abused children “in a manner that amounted to torture.”

O’Malley was suspended from the HSE in February 2022 after he was arrested by gardaí following information from FBI investigators about his activity on the social media app Kik.

In sentencing him to six years’ imprisonment today, Judge Garvan ordered counseling and three years of post-release supervision under the Probation Service.

He also stipulated that upon release, O’Malley must obtain prior permission from police or the Probation Service to possess, use or access smartphones or other digital devices.

He must also allow police to inspect any such devices.

The prison sentence was rescheduled on October 21 last year when O’Malley was first remanded in custody by Judge Garavan.