A young Wicklow man sexually exploited over 60 young children by posing as a teenage girl on Facebook and getting them to send him naked pictures of themselves, a court has heard.
The 26-year-old man appeared before a sitting of Wicklow Circuit Criminal Court on Friday where he faced a total of 190 charges relating to various dates in 2015.
In many instances, the accused, purporting to be a teenage girl who sent nude photos of herself to young boys, warned the victims that she was suicidal and would kill herself if they didn’t send her back naked photos of themselves.
In some cases, he asked young boys to engage in sexual activity with another child and to take photos of it.
The offences involved the sexual exploitation of 64 children, the vast majority of whom were young boys including one who was just eight-years-old.
In one instance, he asked a young boy to take a picture of the penis of his three-year-old cousin, but he refused.
Most cases involved victims based in Ireland.
Counsel for the DPP, Anne Rowland SC, said the defendant was accused of 144 counts of the sexual exploitation of a child contrary to Section 3 of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998.
He was also charged with 37 counts of the possession of child pornography and 11 counts of distributing child pornographic images contrary to other sections of the same legislation.
The accused pleaded guilty to a total of 26 sample charges.
Detective Garda Georgina Earley of the Garda National Protective Services Bureau told the court that gardaí were alerted about the offences by the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in October 2015.
Facebook accounts
The court heard the accused had set up four Facebook accounts which were used to commit the offences with three of them containing variant spellings of the name of a teenage girl he had known from school.
He asked one victim to send him nude photos of his two younger brothers who were aged 12 and 10.
The court heard the accused had persuaded three young siblings based in the UK, for photos of their genital areas. They included a young girl aged 10, whose photos he redistributed online.
Det Garda Earley one boy ultimately sent 12 images to the defendant via Facebook.
However, the court heard that the boy’s father contacted the accused via Facebook and said he would be alerting police about what happened.
When another victim with a moderate learning disability who had already sent him naked pictures refused to comply with a request, the accused warned him: “Tell me to f**k off one more time and I’ll put them on Facebook for everyone to see.”
Det Garda Earley said he threatened another 13-year-old victim who had autism that he would tell his mother if he did not comply with his instructions.
When the same boy asked, whom he thought was a girl, if she wanted a relationship, the accused texted back: “No. You’re a handicap.”
The court heard that at one stage, the accused pretended to be a 13-year-old girl from Wales who wore a wig as a result of chemotherapy and threatened victims that she would self-harm if they did not respond to her requests.
In another case, he tried to persuade an 11-year-old boy to send him a photo of his sperm via Instagram.
Det Garda Earley told the court that the accused denied any knowledge of the Facebook accounts when he was arrested in 2017 and intimated one might belong to his brother.
She said most of the young children contacted by the accused did not wish to provide a victim impact statement as it would be too upsetting to recall such events.
However, one victim who was 12-years-old at the time of the offence said what the accused did “completely stole my innocence as a child and it impacted my life for years.”
The court heard that he believed the impact of what happened affected him even more now that he was older.
Cross-examined by counsel for the defendant, Shane Costello SC, Det Garda Earley agreed that the defendant was aged 17-18 at the time of the offences.
Evidence
The boy’s father gave evidence that he only fully understood the gravity of his son’s offending for the first time after what he had heard in court.
Asked if he was surprised, the man replied: “Shocked.”
He added: “I apologise for what he has done. Honestly, I don’t know what was going on in his mind.”
Mr Costello asked the court to recognise that his client, who has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, had entered an early guilty plea and spared many young victims from having to give evidence.
Counsels said the accused did not deny that he had committed the offences but had difficulty remembering specific details because of the “scale” of what he did.
Mr Costello said he was deeply remorseful and ashamed as well as recognising the gross effect of what he did on his victims.
“He wants his victims to know they did nothing wrong and that he is entirely guilty,” said Mr Costello.
Judge Patrick Quinn remanded the accused on continuing bail to the same court for sentencing on a date next month.
