Held in Broward jail, convicted molester faces 516 new charges over child porn
By Brian Haas Staff Writer Posted
April 15 2005
A convicted child molester accused last year of abusing a 5-year-old boy faces another 516 charges, detectives said Wednesday.
Gael Francis O'Riorden, 72, was out on $125,000 bond when he was arrested on 516 charges of possession of photographs of sexual performances by a child and one charge of promoting the sexual performance of a child. He was being held in the Broward County Jail on Thursday night on $5.16 million bond.
Forensic computer detectives with the Law Enforcement Against Child Harm taskforce took months scouring O'Riorden's computers, where they found the child-porn images, said Hugh Graf, spokesman for the Broward Sheriff's Office. Detectives obtained the computers after O'Riorden was arrested in 2004 on charges of lewd and lascivious exhibition in the presence of a minor under 16 and lewd and lascivious molestation, Graf said. In that case, the Sheriff's Office has said O'Riorden molested a 5-year-old boy whose mother abandoned the child.
His latest arrest report said that detectives found 31 video clips and 485 images showing children engaged in sexual acts or naked.
The report said detectives also found multiple copies of images, which led to the charge that he was "promoting" or distributing them.
"The taskforce members are looking into whether any of those pictures have local kids," Graf said.
O'Riorden, a Pompano Beach man and self-proclaimed children's advocate, has pleaded not guilty to the 2004 charges and said Thursday at his bond hearing that he has done nothing wrong.
At the bond hearing before Broward County Judge Mary Robinson, O'Riorden tried to plea "not guilty" to the charges, despite the fact that it was not an arraignment. Shortly into the hearing, an unidentified man behind O'Riorden yelled that he didn't want to be in jail with someone accused of victimizing children.
"I didn't do nothing wrong," O'Riorden roared back. "Why don't you wait until somebody's guilty before you find out what's going on?"
Robinson struggled a few moments to calculate what O'Riorden's bond would be with 516 charges. She settled on $10,000 for each of them, a total of $5.16 million.
O'Riorden was convicted in 1990 of child molestation and spent four years in prison, court records show. The 2004 case is scheduled to go to trial May 2, but could be delayed because O'Riorden recently tried to fire his second attorney.
Brian Haas can be reached at bhaas@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4631.
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