Ireland-based Nigerian man avoids immediate jail after guilty plea in child abuse material case
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An Ireland-based Nigerian national, Austin Odibei, has avoided serving an immediate prison term after pleading guilty to possessing child sexual abuse material.
The case emerged following an investigation by An Garda Síochána, Ireland’s national police service. Authorities were alerted in March 2019 after Google flagged the upload of suspected illegal content to its cloud platform. A phone number linked to a Gmail account bearing Mr Odibei’s name led investigators to him.
Officers traced the 49-year-old to his residence in Clondalkin, Dublin, where he lives with his wife and two children. During a search of the property, law enforcement officials seized multiple electronic devices, including a digital camera discovered in a storage press and a mobile phone.
A forensic examination of the devices uncovered several video and image files categorised under Ireland’s most serious classifications of child sexual abuse material. The court heard that some of the files involved explicit content considered the highest level of severity under Irish law.
At the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, the defence argued that certain files found on the accused’s phone had been sent by a third party. Prosecutors, however, maintained that the material had been uploaded to cloud storage from his personal device.
Presiding over the matter, Judge Crowe described child sexual abuse material as a source of profound harm and societal revulsion. She criticised the timing of the defendant’s guilty plea, noting that it came very late in the proceedings, and expressed dissatisfaction with the tone of an apology letter submitted to the court, saying it failed to acknowledge the harm suffered by the children depicted.
An offer of €1,000 in compensation was rejected by the court, which ruled it inappropriate in the circumstances.
Although a two-year custodial sentence was initially imposed, it was reduced to 18 months and ultimately suspended on strict conditions, including a three-year period of good behaviour described by the court as deliberately lengthy. The seized phone and digital camera were ordered to be destroyed.
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