Curtin is the only child of a builder and his wife, who had emigrated from near Tralee in county Kerry to south London where Brian was born and raised, attending St Joseph's Roman Catholic Primary School, Putney Bridge Road, Wandsworth, as well as the Salesian College, in Surrey Lane, Battersea.
[1][2] He was politically active in Fianna Fáil, and later the Progressive Democrats,[1] for which party stood unsuccessfully for election to Tralee Town Council.
In May 2002, the Garda Síochána launched Operation Amethyst, a major investigation based on details received from Interpol in August 2001 of Irish credit card transactions made in 1999 to a child-pornography website in Texas.
Detectives executed a search warrant on Curtin's private residence, seized his computer and reported finding 273 pornographic images of children on the hard disk.
[10] In June 2004 Justice Minister McDowell moved an impeachment motion in the Dáil, saying Curtin was "unsuitable to exercise the office of a judge of the Circuit Court".
The challenges were unsuccessful and following a Supreme Court ruling in March 2006 upholding the process,[15] the select committee took custody of the computer from the Gardaí and hired experts to examine it.
[16] The process took longer than expected but they planned to issue a report to the Oireachtas in late 2006 to facilitate a debate and vote.