A young Dublin man caught with child pornography showing the sadomasochistic rape and torture of an 18- month-old baby girl was looking at it because it interested him, a court has heard.

Gardaí found 5,919 images and 328 video files on two laptops and a phone belonging to Conor Emmet (20) after an intelligence operation involving the FBI and Europol. The gardaí said the graphic material was on the upper end of seriousness in such cases.

Today Detective Garda Bríd Wallace from the Cyber Crime Bureau said the images and movies spanned all categories of seriousness, including video files showing the rape and torture of an 18-month-old girl.

Emmet, of North Way Estate Finglas, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possessing the digital images and movies on two laptops at his home on May 17th, 2016.

He has no previous convictions.

Det Wallace told Derek Cooney BL, prosecuting, that one video showed an 18-month-old girl being sexually abused by a masked female.

The court heard that this child has since been identified in Thailand and taken to safety.

“The child’s screams were heard throughout the video,” Det Wallace said.

One of the videos showed a child being held over a toilet and urinated on by a female, the court heard.

Det Wallace told Mr Cooney that gardaí also found an interactive book called Welcome to Paedophilia Handbook on Emmet’s computer.

“This included sections entitled ‘How to handle police and the public if things go wrong’, ‘How to have sex with kids in safe and rewarding ways’ and ‘Hunting season’,” Det Wallace said.

A Garda memo of interviews stated that Emmet had first accessed child porn when he was aged 16.

Tara Burns SC, defending, said Emmet has done great work to overcome what was obviously a sickness.

“There is no other way to explain this as it is truly and seriously dreadful,” she said.

Ms Burns handed in several letters to the court, which included letters from the defendant, his parents and a family friend.

“My client is from an extraordinarily good family, and has parents that have supported him throughout because he is a kind, caring and loving person,” she said.

Ms Burns said that representatives from One in Four, a victim support group with whom Emmet has completed a programme, said he had made honest disclosures in relation to his behaviour. She said Emmet told a psychiatrist attached to this programme that he was “looking at it [THE MATERIAL)]because it interested me”.

Ms Burns said the defendant did very well at school, completed Gaisce awards, and now volunteers at a charity shop.

“He stepped off the precipice and has broken his parents’ hearts,” she said.

The court previously heard that Emmet came to Garda attention when the FBI began monitoring a Tor network, which anonymises users and makes them difficult to track, called “playpen” after arresting an individual in America. The FBI passed this user’s and other Irish users’ IP addresses to Europol, who sent them to gardaí at the Online Child Exploitation Unit.

Gardaí raided Emmet’s home in May 2016 and seized two laptops and a mobile phone. The defendant admitted during the search he had accessed child porn.

Judge Karen O’Connor adjourned sentencing until May 11th.