Man jailed for showing sexual video to 3-year-old son

By Sonya McLean

A man who got his three-year-old son to watch a woman online engaging in sexual activity has been  jailed for three years at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

The 27-year-old Dublin man pleaded guilty to masturbating in the presence of a child, knowing or being reckless as to whether the child was aware and inducing a child to look at a picture of sexual activity in June 2022.  He can’t be named to protect the child’s anonymity.

A local detective told Emer Ní Chúagáin BL, prosecuting, that gardaí were contacted by a British police force in October 2023 after the man was identified in a video as a person of interest in relation to an investigation into child sexual abuse.

The British police force at the time were dealing with a woman who had been streaming footage of sexual activity over a social media platform. The woman had been asking viewers to conduct sexual acts on children or perform sexual acts in front of children.

Gardaí analysed a video that showed the accused man engaging with the woman on a social media platform which initially began with him masturbating in his bedroom before he went into the bedroom of his then three-year-old son.

The man then shows the child the video of the woman engaging in sexual activity and the child can be observed to be “pulling away” from the image, the garda told Ms Ní Chúagáin.

The man then picks up his son and sits him down beside him on the bed “to view the material”, the garda said.

He said the man then leaves the room before again returning and masturbating in front of the child. At one point he can be seen guiding the child’s hand to touch his penis.

The garda said the video is approximately 17 minutes long.

Having heard facts on Tuesday, Judge Martin Nolan adjourned the case overnight to consider sentence.

On Wednesday, the judge noted that the parent-child relationship is one of the few in which “one party has an obligation to take care of the other party”.

“This man had a responsibility to mind, parent and protect this child,” Judge Nolan continued, adding it is a “understatement to say he didn’t discharge that obligation”.

“His behaviour is not understandable, nonetheless it is what occurred and he must be punished for what he did,” the judge said, noting the man has a high degree of moral culpability.

Judge Nolan said the man abused the trust of the child, and the situation in which he was minding his son. He said the man’s actions towards the child were “inexplicable and reprehensible”, and the man “has to serve a custodial term”.

The judge set a headline global sentence of six years, which he reduced to three years taking into account the mitigation and the man’s personal circumstances.

The court previously heard that the man was identified, and his home was searched in October 2023 during which a number of electronic devices were seized, but nothing of evidential value was found on them.

Gardaí then contacted the man’s partner at the time in order to identify the interior of the home that could be clearly seen on the footage and found it matched that on the video.

The man was arrested and interviewed in October 2023. He made certain admissions and told gardaí “what I have done is terrible”.

He said he was “talking to a girl” on a particular site and he told her he was with his son. He said things then got “foggy” and he can’t remember exactly what happened. He said he felt ashamed and did not want to harm his son.

The man said “it was a once off” and would never happen again. He said he didn’t realise the woman was recording him and the child.

He explained that he was “low in confidence” and had been “detained under the Mental Health Act” around the time of the incident. He denied that the child saw his penis or touched his penis and he said the woman asked him to show her the child’s penis and he refused to do that.

The man has three previous convictions from the District Court. A victim impact statement had been prepared by the child’s mother and was handed into the court but not read out.

The garda agreed with James Dwyer SC, defending. that gardaí were contacted by the British police force after it was thought that the video had originated from Ireland.

He acknowledged that the man pleaded guilty at an early stage in the process. The man claimed that he had been intoxicated at the time and had taken cannabis.

The man had been minding the child while the boy’s mother was at work. He said he began talking to the woman online. It was accepted that the man had “repeatedly expressed shame and sorrow” for his behaviour.

Mr Dwyer told the court that his client currently lives in homeless accommodation and his mother had suffered from addiction. He currently has supervised access to his child.

A psychological report was handed into the court and counsel said his client has “intense shame and self-hatred”. He is considered to be “a psychologically vulnerable man”, having potentially suffered from depression since childhood.

Counsel said there is nothing to suggest that his client has a sexual interest in children and there is nothing to suggest that he was aware he was being recorded at the time. His client acknowledges that his behaviour was “very serious” and “a breach of trust”.