BishopAccountability.org
	HSE Funds Porn Man's Child Studies By Enda Leahy and Nicola Tallant The Sunday Times [Ireland] May 21, 2006 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-2189991,00.html A Health Service Executive (HSE) employee who has pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography was being funded by the state body to do a masters degree in child psychology at the same time as undergoing a treatment programme for paedophiles. Seamus Fennelly, 48, who worked as an administrator in the HSE offices in Kilkenny, had access to sensitive information on children in care. Earlier this month he pleaded guilty to serious child pornography charges at Kilkenny district court and he is due to be sentenced tomorrow. The former Capuchin brother was sent by the HSE to the Granada Institute in Dublin, one of the few Irish clinics to specialise in the treatment of sexual offenders. The agency paid for his treatment, which costs €2,400 for an assessment and €90 per session afterwards. The HSE also sponsored Fennelly, who was the administrator of its community care section in Waterford, to undertake a masters degree in psychology, specialising in child psychology, at the Waterford Institute of Technology. His travel expenses were paid by the HSE. The HSE refused to comment on the case last week, saying it does not release information on matters still before the courts or about individual employees. Fennelly is currently on paid suspension while he awaits the sentencing hearing. It is unclear if the HSE knew about the child porn allegations when it agreed to pay for his treatment at Granada and for the psychology degree course. Until the allegations emerged Fennelly was on track to become a senior HSE specialist in the treatment of troubled children. Fennelly was charged with two counts of possession of child pornography relating to dates in May 2005 and February 2003 — less than a year after the first raids under Operation Amethyst — after a raid on his house last year uncovered "graphic" images on his computer. Local gardai are unsure as to the origin of the material. Operation Amethyst snared judge Brian Curtin and celebrity chef Tim Allen as well as solicitors, the owner of a children's fun park, school headmasters, a librarian, and a choirmaster. Surveillance by the FBI and the US Postal Service identified a list of 150,000 downloaders worldwide, including 130 people in Ireland, who had paid for child pornography from a website run by a couple in Texas. Some 500 gardai carried out simultaneous raids in May 2002, but arrests for possession of child porn have continued intermittently since, the most recent being last March when a solicitor from Ballsbridge was charged in Dublin circuit criminal court. Another former HSE employee, Paul McDaid of Letterkenny, was arrested and charged during the Operation Amethyst raids. McDaid, a priest from 1989 until 1996, was employed as a health promotion worker with the North Western health board at the time of the offence. He served 18 months in prison. Less than 350 of the children in the pornographic images targeted by Operation Amethyst have been traced. Tens of thousands of children are believed to have been used in the scenes sold by the American internet site that was first raided in 1999. Accounts seized from the Landslide site resulted in the prosecution of Allen, Curtin and Clara Lara founder Peter Morphew among others. American investigators say they have still not tracked down most of the children used by the husband-and-wife team in Texas. Many are believed to have come from Russia and Eastern Europe. Terri Moore, the former assistant district attorney for the trial of the couple, Thomas and Janice Reedy, said: "The questions still remain — who are these children, where are they, what could possibly be going on with them today? The images will remain with me. I won't be able to forget them." At the time it was shut down, Landslide was earning $1m (ˆ780,000) a month selling child pornography to credit card-holders. In an RTE documentary to be broadcast this week, which traces what happened after the raid on the Reedy home in Texas seven years ago, Irish detectives and government officials are strongly commended. Cormac Callanan, chief executive of Inhope.org, an internet watchdog group, says that laws brought in prior to the investigation facilitated the prosecution of those who had bought the images. "Before the investigation a committee out of the Department of Justice had felt that they needed to understand the internet more and how it was affecting the lives of Irish citizens," said Callanan. "A historic piece of legislation was brought in which was comprehensive and very modern. It meant that those who had downloaded and possessed these images were partly responsible."
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