March 2011 Kid porn perv freed A CHILD porn pervert walked free from court yesterday. John McDonnell, 26, of Dublin, was handed a suspended sentence after he admitted to having 268 vile images on his computer. Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard McDonnell first became obsessed with child sex photos when he was 15 and started hanging around with “geeks”. Cops founds the pictures stored in his ‘My Documents’ folder after a tip-off from German police that he had been accessing the sick sites. McDonnell had attempted to delete most of the repulsive images but they could still be found on two desktop computers in the family home. McDonnell co-operated fully with gardai. He admitted he had been viewing the images for several years and had tried to stop but failed. He told gardai: “I knew what I was doing was terrible and that these people are terrible.” Judge Tony Hunt said McDonnell’s crime was “repulsive and repellent”. He said: “Young children, often from areas of poverty and without parental supervision and who are therefore vulnerable to exploitation, are the very real victims in this offence.” A Probation Services report said McDonnell developed an interest in kiddie porn when he had a lot of confusion about sex. He has received counselling since his arrest in 2007 and was now rehabilitated, it said. Judge Hunt was satisfied that media worker McDonnell did not pose a significant danger to children or society and was unlikely to re-offend. He suspended the sentence for two-and-a-half years.