Former Irish priest sentenced to 3 years for child porn collection

WireUpdate:  DUBLIN, IRELAND (BNO NEWS) -- A former priest and convicted child abuser was sentenced to three years in jail in Ireland on Tuesday for possessing child pornography, court officials told a local newspaper.

Oliver O'Grady, 66, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to three counts of possessing child pornography. Police said O'Grady possessed thousands of explicit images of children, some as young as two, which were stored on computers and USB drives.

Police also found more than six hours of child pornography videos and more than 500 pages of online discussions about children engaged in sex, the Irish Times reported. An audio file was also discovered in which O'Grady discussed religious matters and the sexual abuse of a male child.

"If people didn't download child pornography, there is a good chance that those children would not be abused in the first place, said Judge Martin Nolan, as quoted by the newspaper.

The images were discovered when O'Grady left his laptop on an Aer Lingus flight in 2010 and a staff member alerted police after coming across the files. Aer Lingus rules state that if lost property is not claimed within three months, the staff member who found it is allowed to keep it.

O'Grady was born in Limerick and emigrated to California after joining the priesthood. He was previously sentenced to 14 years in prison in California for abusing children while a priest. He was deported to his native Ireland in 2001 after serving seven years of his sentence.

After leaving the priesthood, he moved to the Dutch capital of Amsterdam for several years before returning to Ireland on the flight where he left his laptop behind.