The Court of Appeal has dismissed a Director of Public Prosecutions application to review as unduly lenient a sentence imposed on Robert Traynor for possessing and producing child pornography.
The court said the sentence was very lenient and that fully suspending it lay at the “very outer limits” of the sentencing judge’s margin of appreciation. It nevertheless concluded the sentence remained within that margin and would not intervene. The appeal was dismissed.
Traynor had pleaded guilty on a full facts basis to one possession count and one production count. The sentencing judge imposed concurrent sentences of two and a half years on each count, suspended in full for three years under probation supervision, with therapy and assessment for a sex offender treatment programme among the conditions. The judge also took the remaining counts into consideration.
The Court of Appeal recorded that the material included 2,123 Category 2 images and videos involving real children, and 2,287 Category 3 computer-generated images. The production material was created between 2014 and 2015. The court noted the volume of material, the use of Traynor’s technical skills to create computer-generated images and to make detection less likely, and the duration for which material was retained. It said the production sentence before mitigation could have been higher to reflect deterrence, but remained within the sentencing judge’s discretion.
The DPP argued that the sentencing judge had given too little weight to aggravating factors and deterrence, too much weight to mitigation, and erred by suspending the entire sentence. Traynor’s counsel argued that the sentence was within the appropriate range and that the sentencing judge had considered deterrence alongside proportionality and his personal circumstances.
The appeal court recognised strong mitigating factors, including no previous convictions, cooperation with Gardaí, guilty pleas, anxiety and isolation linked to a long-standing skin disorder, and engagement with counselling. It concluded that the effort to address his offending through rehabilitation justified continuing that work in the community. The ruling left the original sentence and its suspension in place; it did not replace them with a custodial sentence.