A man who was caught with child pornography on his laptop while gardaí­ investigated harassment allegations made against him, has been given a four year suspended prison sentence.

John Whelan (47) pleaded guilty to the harassment of eight women at the National Rehabilitation Hospital on dates between July 21st, 2011 and January 5th, 2012.

Gardaí­ found the child porn on his laptop after he had handed it over as part of the harassment investigation.

Judge Martin Nolan heard Whelan had installed a hidden camera into the shower of a ladies locker room. He had 885 images of the women stored on his laptop and filed in folders under the names of the victims.

On Monday at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Nolan heard that during that investigation in 2012, Whelan’s laptop was forwarded to the Garda Cyber Crime Bureau for further analysis after suspected child pornographic images were discovered.

However, due to a lack of resources in that unit, the reports did not come back until 2016, allowing for Whelan’s prosecution.

Whelan, of Farrenboley Park, Windy Arbour, Dublin, pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography at his home on March 20, 2012.

Explicit

Garda Sgt Colm O’Giollain told Fiona McGowan BL, prosecuting, that more than 5,500 child pornographic images were discovered on Whelan’s laptop, including six which depicted explicit child sex images and just under 5,500 images of children exposing themselves. The remaining images were child pornographic animations.

Sgt O’Giollain agreed with Vincent Heneghan SC, defending, that Whelan had not come to garda attention since his last appearance before Judge Nolan in 2012.

He accepted that he spent his time caring for his elderly mother and agreed with a suggestion from counsel that he was “not a concern to gardaí”.

Mr Heneghan said the images were downloaded between 2009 to 2012 and he accepted that six of those images were horrific.

Counsel submitted that the case could have been dealt with at the same time of the harassment case but because of a lack of resources, gardaí­could not analyse the material.

Judge Nolan said because the Garda unit was overloaded, Whelan had the case hanging over him for four years.

He referred to earlier case law and said that higher courts had previously found that a suspended sentence was acceptable in situations in which there was no evidence that the images were distributed, there was a plea of guilty and the defendant had a lack of relevant convictions.

Judge Nolan said he was satisfied that the chance of Whelan re-offending was low. He suspended a three year sentence on strict conditions, including that Whelan engage with the Probation Service for 18 months.