A 61-YEAR-OLD man who sexually exploited a young child in his care for over a year and a half will be sentenced next month at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
The accused, who cannot be named to protect the child’s identity, pleaded guilty to nine sample counts from a total of 69 charges spanning a period between March 2021 and November 2022.
He admitted to five counts of sexually exploiting a child, three counts of producing child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography on dates unknown during this period.
The child was aged between three and a half and five years’ old at the time of the abuse.
At a hearing today, the court heard that the little girl’s father lived in a flat across the corridor from the accused in Dublin.
Garda Gillian Ryan told Simon Matthews BL, prosecuting, that the accused man looked after the child whenever her father went out to the shops for short periods of between 10 or 20 minutes.
The child’s parents did not live together, but the accused would give lifts to the parents at different stages and the father would watch football with the accused.
The court heard that on 4 November 2022, the child, then aged five, told one of her older relatives of her concerns regarding the accused behaviour towards her.
This woman contacted the child’s mother and the following day they attended Temple Street and gardaí took a report of the sexual offence allegations.
The girl confirmed in an interview with a child specialist garda that the accused would carry out the abuse video her using his Samsung tablet.
Gardaí obtained a warrant to search the accused’s address and he cooperated fully with an investigation, providing a voluntary statement with full admissions.
The man said the girl’s father would come into his flat to watch a football match and would bring his daughter, who began to get used to him and call him by his first name.
The accused said: ‘I’d be lying if I remembered the first time,’ but said the abuse started with him playing and wrestling with the little girl, which progressed to him pulling down her underwear and touching her.
The man said he would feel incredibly guilty after each incident.
Gardaí seized the man’s Samsung phone, Samsung tablet and also the duvet that appeared in several of the videos found on his devices.
On the mobile, gardaí found 113 child exploitation images related to the girl, and a further 755 images of child exploitation which were not related to her.
There were also three videos of child exploitation related to the child, in which the man’s duvet was visible as well as a distinct tattoo on one of his hands.
On the tablet, gardaí discovered 81 videos and 11 images of child exploitation, none of which were of the child in question.
The accused man has several previous convictions, including one for possession of child pornography in 2014, for which he was sentenced to four years with the final year suspended.
He was jailed for three years in 2008 for sexually assaulting a minor in 2004 and he received a suspended sentence in 1997 for sexual assault.
In 1978, the accused was convicted of common assault.
The child’s mother read a victim impact statement to the court in which she said she has stopped working since the offences came to light so that she can care for her child.
She said her daughter feels like the offences were her fault and is lashing out at people around her and wetting herself. The child strips herself down and poses in front of the mirror, her mother said, and will no longer sleep in her own bed. She used to go to sleep at 7.30 at night, her mother said, but now the child cannot sleep until the early hours of the morning.
The little girl, who is now six, is still on a waiting list to receive counselling, the court heard.
“I feel like it’s my fault for sending her away,” said her mother, adding that she no longer lets her daughter see her father.
The child’s father also read an emotional victim impact statement to the court, saying he had not seen his daughter since November 2022.
The man said he can’t sleep at night and is barely functioning during the days as he feels guilty about what happened to his daughter.
He said he thought of the accused as his friend. He has relapsed into smoking weed and would be “lost without work”. He can’t afford counselling, he told the court.
Detective Garda Ryan agreed with Ger Small SC, defending, that the accused had expressed remorse and disappointment in himself.
The court heard that when asked by gardaí if he was not nervous about being caught, the accused replied that he was hoping to be put out of his misery.
“I needed to get it off my chest. I’m glad it’s out there,” he said, reiterating his feelings of shame and disgust that he had not been able to resist the temptation.
Counsel said the accused had cooperated extensively with gardaí and had submitted a very early guilty plea, although she accepted that he struggled to fully appreciate the impact of the offences on the child.
The court heard that the man left school at 15 and worked most of his life. His partner died tragically by drowning in 2011.
Small said when her client was released from prison in 2017 he attended therapy, began working in a charity shop and attending a social group.
A forensic psychologist’s report was handed into court and counsel pointed to the paragraph referring to the accused’s risk of reoffending, however these paragraphs were not read aloud.
Judge Orla Crowe ordered a probation report to be prepared and asked probation services to do an assessment of the accused’s future risk.
A medical report submitted to the court said the accused was brought by ambulance to hospital last June and got a stent in his right coronary artery.
Judge Crowe also asked for a structure to be put in place to cater for the eventual release of the accused back into the community.
The case will be finalised on 31 January next.
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