Suspended sentence for man caught with child sexual abuse material

This article contains references to child sexual abuse that some readers may find distressing. Reader discretion is advised.

By Declan Brennan

A man caught with 35 videos of child sexual abuse material has received a suspended prison sentence.

Gedas Bertulis (34) pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of videos of the illegal material at his home in Mulhuddart in March 2022. The man lived there with a relative who the court heard was disgusted by his crime.

Garda Megan Fury told the court that the videos involved children aged from five to 13 years old in various sexual activities, some of which involved adult men.

There were also five separate videos of children in sexually explicit poses.

After his arrest Bertulis said he was glad he had been caught and that his behaviour made him feel  sick to his stomach.

“I’m glad I got caught. I would like to apologise for my disgusting behaviour,” he told gardai. He said he had an addiction but that he was never going to do anything like this again.

Karl Monahan BL, defending, told the court that during the lockdown, his client began drinking heavily and would download the material from the websites designed to make it difficult to trace a user’s identity.

He said his client is a Lithuanian national who has a good history of employment here and has no relevant previous convictions. He has not come to adverse garda attention since this offending.

Judge Martin Nolan noted that the court was guided by the higher courts, in particular the 2006 “DPP v Loving” judgment in which the Court of Appeal dealt with sentencing a defendant for possession of “child pornography”. 

The judge noted that this judgment states that in the absence of aggravating factors, including evidence of distribution or sharing the material, previous offending, a non-custodial sentence should be considered.

Judge Nolan said these aggravating factors were absent in this case. He imposed a sentence of two and a half years and suspended in it full on condition that Bertulis keep the peace and be of good behaviour for that period.