A judge has jailed a retired industrial engineer for one year for the possession of child abuse images that included two short videos of two babies being sexually abused by an adult male.At Ennis Circuit Court, Judge Francis Comerford handed down a 22-month prison term on Vaughn Bezuidenhout (59) of Brickhill West, Cratloe, Co Clare, with the final 10 months suspended.The judge said gardaí detected a total of 2,483 child abuse images, including 1,066 Category One images that depict sexual activity of a serious nature involving a child.The judge said the images and videos are “repulsive”. The videos described in court involved the degradation of children, and included images of babies under the age of one year being abused.Bezuidenhout retired early from his role at pharma firm Johnson & Johnson in February of this year. The native of South Africa moved to Ireland in 2004 “for a fresh start”.Bezuidenhout brought a holdall bag to court in anticipation of being jailed.Det Gda Keith Taylor of the Clare Garda Protective Services Unit (PSU) said gardaí were first alerted to Bezuidenhout’s possession of child abuse images through a notification from the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).Taylor said the notification from the NCMEC concerned a user on the Kick website uploading 18 images and seven videos on a nine-day period in March and April 2021.The notification eventually led to Bezuidenhout’s home at Cratloe being searched in July 2021.Bezuidenhout pleaded guilty to four separate charges, one related to producing child pornography by way of a text document. Counsel for the State Sarah Jane Comerford said that this comprised stories written up by Bezuidenhout on his computer concerning sexual acts being performed on and to pubescent girls aged 14 and 15 years of age.When gardaí went to arrest Bezuidenhout in September 2023, his wife said that he was “in Cork attending counselling for porn addiction”.The judge set a headline sentence of 30 months in prison and said it would be higher but for the vulnerability of the defendant.He said that Bezuidenhout was remorseful for his actions and had sought treatment to address his behaviour. Judge Comerford also stated Bezuidenhout’s offending will result in his disgrace at a very high level and it is unusual for anyone who commits such an offence to work again.With mitigation, the sentence was reduced to 22 months, with the final 10 months suspended on condition Bezuidenhout go under the care of the Probation Services after his release from prison.The judge said that he also took into account Bezuidenhout’s tragic start to his life, and his history of depression which required the intervention of the psychiatric services.Bezuidenhout has two adult children from a previous marriage that ended in divorce. He remarried in Ireland and that relationship continues, the court was told.