November 2005 No sentence for man (33) in child abuse images case THE NORTH Fingal man who was the first in the country to be sentenced for possession of child pornography has had his six-month jail term suspended on appeal. Alan Crosby (33) will not now serve a prison sentence for the offence, after Judge Patricia Ryan decided at the Court of Criminal Appeal last week that he was at ‘low risk’ of re-offending. THE NORTH Fingal man who was the first in the country to be sentenced for possession of child abuse images has had his six-month jail term suspended on appeal. Alan Crosby (33) will not now serve a prison sentence for the offence, after Judge Patricia Ryan decided at the Court of Criminal Appeal last week that he was at ‘low risk’ of re-offending. Crosby was convicted by Judge Sean MacBride at Balbriggan District Court in January, 2003 of possession of child pornography at rented accommodation at Castlelands, Balbriggan. The charge followed the uncovering of pornographic images on computers and discs belonging to Crosby in a raid at Castlelands on May 27, 2002. Crosby had downloaded a large number of images from the Internet and paid for them by credit card. Judge MacBride had sentenced him to nine months imprisonment, suspending the final three months. Crosby, with an address at the time at Railway Street, Balbriggan, was a former teacher of art and design and pleaded guilty to the offence. Balbriggan Court had heard that Crosby was not part of any ‘ring’, the material was for his own use and he had co-operated fully with the gardai, providing them with computer codewords. While taking this into account, Judge MacBride had said suspending three months of the sentence was as lenient as he could be. He had said: ‘The court must protect young children. These images are the work of the devil and must be condemned by right-thinking people. This cannot be tolerated and the message must be sent out before society is destroyed by this kind of activity’. Crosby subsequently appealed the severity of Judge MacBride’s sentence. Judge Ryan’s decision last Wednesday came after she considered reports from the Granada Institute, a service which runs sex offender treatment programmes. She suspended the full nine months of the sentence on condition that Crosby attends the Granada Institute and co-operates with the Probation Service for another year. He was entered into a peace bond for a year and fined E750. Judge Ryan also ordered the destruction of all the material seized by the gardai. Crosby is now understood to be living elsewhere in north Fingal and is subject to the Sex Offenders Register. The Balbriggan raid was one of dozens carried out around the country in May, 2002 as part of a major garda initiative, Operation Amethyst.