EXCLUSIVE | 

Former soldier exposed as child porn creep could be jailed over threat to journalist

Philip McLernon claims a brain injury made him look at child porn

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A former soldier who was exposed as a child porn pervert could be jailed for threatening a journalist.

Disgraced Philip McLernon was handed a suspended prison sentence in 2022 for downloading category A videos of children being sexually abused.

McLernon’s wife had left him after cops searched his home, seized a number of electronic devices and found 13 images and 11 videos, assessed as category A, and a further 22 images at level B. We confronted McLernon at his home in Antrim at the time, but he had little to say.

However, while still in the time frame of that suspended prison sentence, which was set at four years, he made a menacing threat to a journalist on social media.

McLernon — who claims a brain injury sustained in 2001 made him look at child sex images — appeared at Antrim Magistrates’ Court on Monday.

He admitted sending “by means of a public electronic communications network, a message or other matter that was of a menacing character” on March 23, 2023.

He was given a two-month jail term, suspended for one year, but could yet be jailed for breaching his suspended sentence relating to child images.

The judge said the case would be referred to the Crown Court and it would be up to them to decide what action to take.

The journalist was not named but a prosecutor told the court, sitting in Ballymena, the journalist was mentioned in a tweet by McLernon on March 24 last year.

The prosecutor said the message made reference to a part of the north coast and said the “next time” the journalist “grabs a taxi” there “maybe the story could have a different outcome”.

The prosecutor added that the journalist was specifically mentioned in the tweet and the journalist believed it was “aimed directly at him”, finding the message to be “unsettling and menacing in nature”.

Judge Nigel Broderick said a probation report noted the defendant “recognises the distress which this message would have caused for the victim. The defendant expressed regret and remorse regarding his behaviour”.

A report from a consultant clinical neuropsychologist said because of “ongoing health issues” the defendant was unsuitable for community service and that probation was unnecessary.

The judge said: “My hands are really tied to some extent. I can’t make a community order based on that.”

Judge Broderick told McLernon: “You have expressed regret and remorse and that should hopefully give the victim some comfort because there doesn’t appear to have been a campaign of any sinister nature behind this.”

The judge said he was prepared to accept that “in light of your brain injury”, a medical report said the defendant was “more likely to become angry and to act impulsively”.

At his original trial, the court was told McLernon has a brain injury which impinges on his cognitive functioning and he blamed that for downloading the illegal images of children.

That injury was sustained in a training exercise when he was a corporal in the army in 2001.

The judge at his original trial said there was nothing in the medical evidence that would back up his claims. Her view was that he had tried “to hide behind the acquired brain injury’’.

Before his crimes were exposed, McLernon had been at the forefront of an ex-veterans’ campaign aimed at the government for prosecuting soldiers for alleged crimes during the Troubles.

He took part in one event highlighting how ex-soldiers were living in fear of getting a “knock on the door” from the police and claimed he had been “involved in the intelligence follow-up after the Omagh bomb”.

But it was McLernon who got a knock on the door from the Sunday World, just hours after he had pleaded guilty to a string of child porn charges in February 2022.

A startled McLernon told us he had nothing to say about his convictions.

“I’m not going to comment on that,” he said while poking his head out from his front door.

When asked about his work with a number of army veterans’ groups, he confirmed he had previously been involved but added: “I’ve nothing to say about it.”

We revealed how his former loyalist pals turned on the ex- soldier and have been waging a campaign to get him out of his home town, but without any success.

McLernon had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Antrim loyalists during the 2013 Union flag protests.

In November 2021, he was targeted in what was described as “an elaborate hoax bomb” alert.

It was the second security alert in the area and we can reveal both were aimed at intimidating McLernon out of Antrim.

There have been several since and people living in the area have shouted at him to leave as they have had their lives disrupted by repeated bomb hoaxes.

Loyalists doubled down on their efforts to force McLernon out of Antrim, with graffiti sprayed on walls and bridges warning he will be shot.