Conor O’Hora pleads guilty to harassment and child pornography charges

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Conor O’Hora pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to harassing RTÉ newsreader Sharon Ní Bheoláin between 27 March 2013 and 7 January 2014. He also pleaded guilty to three counts of knowingly possessing child pornography on a mobile phone and computer hard drive at Station Road, Portmarnock, on 18 February 2014.

The proceedings were reported on 16 May 2018. O’Hora was remanded in custody overnight pending sentencing, which the report said was due on Thursday. Judge Martin Nolan warned that he would face jail.

The court heard that the harassment involved more than 30 modified photographs of Ms Ní Bheoláin posted online. The images used her head superimposed onto pornographic pictures. The pornography charges involved about 100 images and sexually explicit and violent online conversations with a co-accused.

Defence counsel Pieter Le Vert said O’Hora had told gardaí that he did not wish Ms Ní Bheoláin harm and that the images and conversations were “really bad fantasies”. O’Hora said he had put the images online so others could “get a jolly out of her”. He co-operated fully with gardaí and had one minor previous conviction for a road traffic offence.

Mr Le Vert said O’Hora was clean of drugs and had undertaken almost 500 hours of group and psychiatric therapy. Judge Nolan accepted that O’Hora was at low risk of reoffending and had taken constructive steps to reform. The court heard that the co-accused had received an 18-month suspended sentence at Cork Circuit Criminal Court earlier that year; the Director of Public Prosecutions was appealing it for undue leniency.

This report covers an earlier stage of the case. Later developments are not reported here.