Serial sex offender jailed for life for ‘systematic abuse’ of boy

A serial sex offender who used a false identity to open up a shop before sexually abusing a boy he had hired to work there has been sentenced to life in prison.

At the sentence hearing, Mr Justice Paul Carney had commented: "This was one of the rare cases where the Court of Criminal Appeal might uphold a life sentence."

The judge rejected professional opinions that the abuser could be dealt with by community sanction as “naïve”.

He said those giving such advice would not be subject to “public opprobrium” were he to accept the recommendations.

The abuser (38) molested the 11-year-old victim systemically and regularly over a six-month period. The abuse took place in the registered sex-offender’s bedsit at an address he had not disclosed to gardaí despite being required to so under the law.

The Dublin man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his victim, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court, to 14 counts of sexual assault and defilement at location in Dublin between December 2008 and June 2009.

The abuse continued after the man had attended the funeral of the child’s mother.

Previous convictions

The accused has 24 previous convictions including six for sexual offences. In 2000 he received a two-year sentence for a sexual assault on a young boy. In 2011 he was jailed for sexually assaulting two boys.

He also has a conviction for a serious assault and for his failure to notify gardaí of his address as a registered sex offender. Mr Justice Carney imposed a life sentence for defilement. He imposed a 14-year sentence for the sex assault charges, to run concurrently. He said the man retains the right to review by parole board when the time comes.

Paul Coffey SC, prosecuting, said the man was aged 33 when he began grooming his victim, who was vulnerable. He then began systematically and regularly sexually abusing him in a bedsit.

Home address

The man was required to tell gardaí his home address but had provided them with his aging parent’s city centre address. In reality he was renting the bedsit and operating the shop using his alias.

His real identity was discovered when gardaí came across the accused during a separate unrelated investigation. Concerns were then raised that he had groomed the victim.

In a victim impact report the boy told his abuser: “Because of you I feel very angry, I have no self-confidence or self-belief. Because of you I walk to school with my head down because I don’t want people to look at me.”

The victim’s family said the child now cried every night and described himself as a “dirty thing”. They described the accused as a predator and said: “You murdered his soul.”

Caroline Biggs SC, defending, told the court that when he was sentenced in 2000 her client did not engage with the sex-offender treatment programmes but that in a 2011 psychological assessment he said he was concerned about his behaviour.

She said he is a psychologically vulnerable man who accepts the consequences of his attraction to young boys. She said the appropriate therapeutic intervention might make him safe for society.