A serial sex offender used a false identity to open up a shop before sexually abusing a young boy he had hired to work there, a court has heard. Giving a clear indication of the prison term he had in mind, Mr Justice Paul Carney said that this was “one of the rare cases where the Court of Criminal Appeal might uphold a life sentence”. He remanded the man in custody until Monday when he will formally pass sentence.
The abuser (38) molested the 11-year-old victim regularly over six months. 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 by 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 in Dublin between December 2008 and June 2009. The abuse continued after the man had attended the funeral of the child’s mother.
The man has 24 previous convictions including six for sexual offences. In June 2000 he received a two-year sentence for the sexual assault of a young boy. In 2011, he was jailed for the sexual assault of 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.
Paul Coffey SC, prosecuting, said the man was 33 when he began grooming his victim who was vulnerable. He then began systematically and regularly sexually abusing him.
The man was required to tell gardaí his home address but had provided them with his ageing parents’ 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 during an 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 that 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 psychologicalassessment, he said he was concerned about his behaviour. She said he was a psychologically vulnerable man who accepted the consequences of his attraction to young boys. She said that the appropriate therapeutic intervention might make him safe for society.