Raphael Farina, a central banker admitted hoarding up to 700k child abuse videos and pictures – Judges free him from 4 year jail term because the warrant was wrongly dated.
A BANKER found with up to 700,000 images of child abuse walked free from court yesterday after his conviction was quashed due to a misdated warrant.
The Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday overturned the conviction of Central Bank administrator Raphael Farina, 67, even though some of the images he had were of toddlers being abused.
A warrant used to search his home was dated incorrectly and consequently did not permit entry to gardai. Farina, of Temple Bar, Dublin, pleaded not guilty to three counts of possession of child abuse images at his home in June 2007. He was jailed for four years and fined 5,000 by Judge Patricia Ryan in February 2011 after a jury found him guilty. Farina’s defence counsel did not contest any of the evidence against him during the trial but only challenged the validity of the warrant.
Gardai had called to Farina’s home with a search warrant as part of an investigation led by the Bavarian Police in Germany. The trial heard that Farina allegedly made a statement admitting to possession of the material.
Farina, who has no previous convictions, worked in the Central Bank as a senior administrative officer from the early 1960s and retired from his job the day after he was arrested. Moving the appeal, Ms Aileen Donnelly SC told the court that flaws in the warrant obtained to search the home rendered it invalid in law and incapable of permitting entry to the apartment. Mr Justice Donal O’Donnell said that the court had not reserved judgement because Farina has been in custody since 2011.
Febuary 2011
Four-year sentence over child abuse images
A 65-year-old man has been sentenced to four years in jail and fined €5,000 for possessing hundreds of thousands of images of child pornography.
Raphael Farina, a former Central Bank employee, of Spranger’s Yard, Crowe Street, Dublin 2, was convicted after a trial at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court last month.
More than 700,000 files containing images or information on child pornography were found on CDs, DVDs and computer disc when his home was searched in 2007.
10,000 images were also found on his home computer.
The files contained images, videos and instructions on avoiding detection from paedophile groups specialising in sharing information.
Farina told gardaí he had been downloading child pornography for ten years and had thousands of images. When his apartment was searched he handed a box to gardaí containing compact discs and DVDs and said ‘there is no point denying it’.
Detective Garda Gerard Keane, a computer forensic examiner, said some of the files had descriptive names and showed graphic images of sexual activity with young children. Over 100 of the images involved babies or toddlers.
Farina told gardaí the material in the box had been kept at work and he had taken it home the previous day. He said he had never downloaded the material at work. He said he was fascinated by breaking the codes and ‘just kept decrypting it’. He told gardaí it became an obsession.
The court was told he had no previous convictions and had been a public servant all his working life, reaching the rank of senior administrative officer in the Central Bank.
He was separated from his wife four years ago and now has a partner in Thailand with whom he has a child.