A Dublin man has been jailed for sending explicit messages to someone he believed was a 14-year-old girl.
Keith Redmond (45) of Clearstream Court, McKee Avenue, Finglas, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to attempting, by electronic means, to disseminate sexually explicit material to a child between August 30th and December 3rd, 2022.
Passing sentence on Thursday, Judge Orla Crowe said this offending took place over three months and described the charge as “inherently serious”.
The judge said the aggravating factors before the court were that Redmond moved the conversation to a private platform when he was aware that the decoy was 14 years of age. There were 83 pages of sexually explicit conversation and Redmond sent four pictures of his penis to the decoy.
The judge said she would consider as mitigating factors his early guilty plea, his admissions, and he gave up his phone to gardaí. He has no previous convictions. He was a married father but has now lost his marriage and his job. In a letter written by Redmond, he outlines his shame and remorse.
The judge said the threshold for a custodial sentence had been passed. She sentenced Redmond to two years in prison, with the final six months suspended for one year.
She also placed him under the supervision of Probation Services for one year post-release. She further ordered that Redmond have no unsupervised access to children.
At a previous hearing, the court heard that the alarm was raised by a UK-based group called Volunteers for Predator Exposure.
That group seeks out people who attempt to communicate with children by creating decoys and waiting to see if the decoy is contacted.
In this case, the group created a decoy called Amber, a 14-year-old girl living in Leeds in the UK.
The court heard that Redmond had put his details on a social media platform called Kick as “male, 44, from Ireland” and that Amber had connected with him.
During her plea in mitigation, Anne Rowland SC, defending, told the judge that this case had caused her concern and should cause the court concern.
She said her client had posted a profile on a widely used website that was not dedicated to porn or underage children, without seeking to contact anyone underage, and a message had come to him.
She said her client had been approached by a UK-based person seeking out predators who are abusing or seeking to exploit underage girls. She said this was not the case with her client.
She said the messaging was “not nice” and had sexual content, but submitted he indicated to a Probation Officer that he was playing out a fantasy and there would never be a meeting.
She said her client had not shown up for an arranged meeting and contact was again initiated by the decoy following two weeks of “radio silence” from her client.
She said there was something very objectionable about the methods of the organisation which set out to entrap her client. She said he had nothing of this nature on his mind and was “beguiled” into it.
Garda Tracey O’Reilly told Karl Moran BL, prosecuting, that within a few messages, Redmond asked Amber what age she was and she replied 14.
Ms Rowland pointed out that Redmond then replied, “OK I’m a bit too old for you”, whereupon the decoy said, “it’s up to you” and Redmond answered, “add me so”.
The court heard that Redmond then requested that the conversation move to the private messaging service WhatsApp.
The court heard there was a “grooming element” in that Redmond discussed meeting Amber for sexual activity, offered to buy her a phone and discussed running away to live together.
They spoke about booking a hotel in Leeds and Redmond said he would have to act as her father and she would have to pretend to be his daughter.
“Your Mum would kill me if she knew I was texting you so this is our secret,” one text read, while another told Amber she was Redmond’s “sexy secret”.
The court heard that the UK group used open-source technology to locate the person making contact with their decoy and then got in touch with a similar Irish group called Child Online Protection Enforcers.
Members of this group located Redmond on a laneway beside Boyle Sports on Manor Street in Dublin 7 and there were “angry scenes” the court heard, before gardaí were called and Redmond asked for Garda protection.
Redmond gave his phone to gardaí and told them about the conversations on Kick and WhatsApp with Amber. He said they talked about “normal stuff” at first but that it turned serious and they talked about what they would do to one another.
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