Former priest jailed for three years for possession of illegal images of children

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The Irish Examiner

Monday, January 30, 2012 – 02:28 PM

A former priest has been jailed for three years today after gardaí found evidence of 65,000 graphic images of children on his laptop.

Oliver O’Grady, who used to live at Charlemont House in Dublin 2, admitted three counts of possession of child pornography, after leaving his computer on a flight from Amsterdam.

He was sentenced at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Oliver O’Grady was a priest in the US for 30 years before being convicted of abusing two children in California.

After serving a seven-year sentence, he was laicised by the church and deported from America.

The 66-year-old returned to live in Ireland and was flying from Amsterdam to Dublin in 2010 when he left a laptop on his flight containing graphic images of children.

Gardaí traced him to a hostel in Dublin, where they found thousands more photos, videos and audio of child porn, stored on hard drives and usb keys.

The judge at Dublin Circuit Court jailed O’Grady for three years, saying the former priest, described as socially isolated, seemed to have a serious problem, and his time in American prison had not rehabilitated him.

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Irish ex-priest Oliver O’Grady sentenced to 3 years in Ireland for child porn cache

680 News

The Associated Press Jan 31, 2012 07:58:00 AM

LONDON – A defrocked Roman Catholic priest who admitted molesting more than 20 children in California has been sentenced to three years in prison in Ireland for possessing child pornography, court officials said Tuesday.

Oliver O’Grady, 66, was arrested in Dublin in December 2010 after leaving a computer containing pornographic images of children on a flight from Amsterdam.

O’Grady worked in northern California from 1971 until 1993, when he was arrested for abusing two brothers. He served seven years in prison and was deported to his native Ireland in 2000. He later moved to the Netherlands for several years.

O’Grady was the subject of the Academy Award-nominated 2006 documentary “Deliver Us From Evil.” In the film he spoke openly of abusing more than 20 children as he was shuffled from one parish to another in California through the 1970s and 80s.

The Dutch Catholic Church came under fire in 2010 after it emerged that O’Grady had been working as a church volunteer in the city of Rotterdam. O’Grady had been living in the country under another name, but parishioners recognized him when “Deliver Us from Evil” was aired on Dutch television. By that time, the disgraced ex-cleric had already left the country.

O’Grady had pleaded guilty to three counts of possessing child pornography. The Irish Courts Service said he was sentenced Monday at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

The Roman Catholic diocese in Stockton, California, disclosed last year that it had agreed to pay $2 million to a brother and sister who alleged O’Grady molested them as children in the 1980s while they attended the Church of the Presentation and its school.

The Sacramento Bee newspaper reported last year that the diocese has now paid out almost $21 million to O’Grady’s victims.

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