A FORMER Irish Catholic priest has been jailed for 22 months at Waterford Circuit Court for possessing child pornography.
Oliver O’Grady, 75, who was previously the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary Deliver Us from Evil, was found guilty by a jury a fortnight ago.
He was charged with one count of possessing a video of an underage girl engaging in a sexual act.
The case came about after one of O’Grady’s housemates reported him to gardaí after discovering a sexually explicit video on the computer.
While O'Grady claimed to have had no knowledge of the video’s existence until it was uncovered during the Gardaí investigation.
He nevertheless accepted the guilty verdict.
O’Grady previously featured in the 2006 documentary Deliver Us from Evil.
The critically-acclaimed film explored O’Grady’s life as an Irish Catholic priest in the US.
O’Grady admitted to having molested and raped approximately 25 children in Northern California from the late 1970s through to the early 1990s.
Using footage from a 15-hour videotaped deposition in which O’Grady detailed his many crimes, the film chronicles the crimes committed by the former priest as well as the cover up that followed and was orchestrated within the Catholic Church.
It also tackles the emotional turmoil and impact of O'Grady's actions on his victims and their families.
A difficult but necessary watch, Deliver Us from Evil was nominated for Best Documentary Feature Oscar at the 2006 Academy Awards, eventually losing out to An Inconvenient Truth.
