A YOUNG MAN who had sex with a teenage girl four years his junior and filmed her has been given a suspended 18-month sentence for defilement and producing child sexual abuse material.

The now 20-year-old Limerick man was aged 18 and the victim was 14 years old when gardaí arrived at the hotel room where the two were staying, having been alerted by the girl’s grandfather, the Central Criminal Court heard.

The man pleaded guilty to three counts of defilement and one count of producing child pornography, at it is known in law, at the hotel in the south-east of the country on 21 July 2024.

He entered the guilty pleas on the first day of his trial. He has no previous convictions and cannot be named to protect the anonymity of the victim.

The court heard the guilty pleas to defilement were accepted on the basis of recklessness as the defendant claimed he thought the girl was 16 years old. The victim maintains that she told him she was 14.

Sentencing him today, Ms Justice Eileen Creedon said that while there was a four-year age gap between the pair, “there was no evidence of force, coercion, degradation or humiliation”.

She set a headline sentence of three and a half years, which she reduced to 18 months taking mitigating factors into account, including his guilty plea, his youth and his personal circumstances, including that he cares for his mother who has a serious medical condition.

She suspended the sentence for a period of two years on a number of conditions, including that the man engage with his GP to enable him to attend counselling. The judge noted he was an adult at the time of the offending and will be placed on the sex offenders’ register.

At a previous sentence hearing, a local garda told Conor O’Doherty SC, prosecuting, that the young man and the girl connected via social media and he asked her out. They met in person on one occasion where they “hung out” before he asked her to stay overnight with him at a hotel a couple of weeks later.

They met up at the hotel on the date in question and were seen on CCTV footage on the hotel grounds. The court was told they had “consensual sex” on three occasions.

During the second encounter, the man filmed the girl on his mobile phone. She asked him to stop, and two clips were later discovered on his phone. They had not been posted on social media and had been deleted, the court heard.

During their time together, the man bought the girl a blue WKD drink and supplied her with some cannabis, which they smoked.

The girl’s grandfather was alerted to her presence at the hotel and called gardaí who arrived at the hotel room. The man was arrested and €150 worth of cannabis was seized. Two videos were later found on his phone.

In her victim impact statement, which was read out in court by counsel, the girl said that in the aftermath of the incident, her body didn’t feel like her own.

“No matter how many showers I took, I didn’t feel clean,” she said. “I remember every little detail of that day. I sit in my room for hours thinking about what happened. It still creeps into my thoughts. I try to force myself to forget it but I don’t think I will ever forget it.”

She said she struggles with her mental health and has had thoughts of taking her own life. The court heard the girl attended the sentence hearing briefly but had to leave.

The man’s father took the stand during the sentence hearing and told Colman Cody SC that his son was a “good kid” who has had a traumatic childhood. He suffered a number of tragedies from a young age, including the deaths of two young friends, and was in a car accident as a child.

The father became emotional as he disclosed that his wife has been diagnosed with a serious illness and the defendant is her carer, which allows his father to keep working. She would be lost without her son, the father said.