Paedophile caught with child porn after reporting offer to ‘share’ boy

A paedophile who tipped off gardaí about plans by other men to “share” an 11-year-old boy was found in possession of child pornography when officers subsequently raided his house.

Hugh McBride (61) will permanently be on the sex offenders after previously being found guilty of a series of attacks on children in England in the 1980s and 1990s.

He appeared at Letterkenny Circuit Court after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography on his laptop at his rented home at Oldtown, Letterkenny.

The court heard McBride was contacted by another sex offender whom he met in Dublin’s Arbour Hill Prison while on remand. He put him in touch with a third party as he was seeking to find work.

However, when he contacted McBride he asked him if he wanted to “share” an 11-year-old boy he had identified in Cork. McBride declined and reported the matter to gardaí, who decided to raid McBride’s house and found the laptop and other items.

The laptop was examined and found to contain 334 child pornography images, many of which had been taken from a nudist website. The court heard the severity of the images was at the lower end of the scale.

Nudist

During a garda interview on February 10th, 2017, McBride said he took the pictures from nudist websites, adding “that to me is not child porn”.

McBride was asked if he had a sexual interest in boys and replied: “Yes, it never goes away”.

The court heard that McBride lives a “pathetic lifestyle” and has been moved on from three different houses after people learned of his previous convictions.

Shane Costello, for McBride, said his client had significant previous convictions and is already subject to a lifelong monitoring on the sex offenders register.

“He always took responsibility for the images. It is to his credit that underneath all of this he went to the gardaí to report a far more serious crime, potentially of a boy aged 11 being shared about Cork city.”

Mr Costello also said his client was not buying the images of the children but that he was managing his own depravity by using images freely available.

Judge John Aylmer was told that McBride's past crimes included gross indecency against young children, taking indecent photographs of young children and indecent assault, for which he served substantial jail sentences.

Judge Aylmer said it was a complex case and he would pass sentence on Friday.