Ex Central banker's sickening child porn

The jury took 20 minutes to find Raphael Farina (65) guilty of having material which included over 100 images of babies.

The court heard he stored the files on his computer and on hundreds of discs in a box which he kept at work.

Farina of Spranger's Yard, Crow Street, Temple Bar, pleaded not guilty to three counts of possession of child pornography at his home on June 6, 2007.

His defence counsel did not contest any of the evidence against him during the trial and told the judge they were only contesting the validity of the search warrant used by gardai.

The jury of nine men and two women returned a unanimous guilty verdict after the one-day trial. Judge Patricia Ryan remanded Farina on continuing bail until next month on condition he surrenders his passport.

Garda Sergeant Paul Murphy told prosecuting counsel Monika Leech that gardai called to Farina's home with a search warrant as part of an investigation into child pornography.

Downloading

Farina let the search take place and admitted he possessed the material, saying, "there's no point in denying it".

He pointed out a computer and a cardboard box full of discs which he said he had taken home from work the previous day.

He said he had been downloading images since he got a computer in 1997 and had downloaded a mixture of adult and child pornography before saving it on floppy disks and CDs.

He admitted he had thousands of images and that some of them were "pretty graphic".

He said he got the files from websites or online bulletin boards and that he never took the pictures himself or paid for them. He admitted masturbating to the files "on the odd occasion".

The main prosecution evidence came from Detective Garda Gerard Keane, a computer forensic examiner.

He initially examined Farina's computer, where he found around 10,000 images and videos contained in folders.

There were also 108 images of pornography involving babies.

hnews@herald.ie