Dublin teenager pleads guilty to possessing and producing 1,700 child abuse images and videos

A DUBLIN TEENAGER recorded sexual online video chats with young girls and had over 1,300 child sex abuse images on his devices, a court heard.

The 17-year-old boy, who cannot be named because he is a juvenile, pleaded guilty at the Dublin Children’s Court to possessing and producing child pornography.

A Garda Divisional Protective Service Unit investigation led to electronic devices being seized from his home in January 2024, when he was aged 15.

Detective Garda Carol Corrigan told Judge Paul Kelly they were submitted to the Garda National Cybercrime Bureau for examination, which detected the presence of a “substantial volume” of sexual material on a phone and an iPad: 2,821 images and videos.

He had 105 images and 46 videos in the child sexual category, which involves explicit acts by children under 18.

The court heard that in the child exposure category, he had 2,282 images, 426 videos, and eight child synthetic images, often known as anime or hentai.

The longest video, which was in the child sexual category, was 27 minutes and 54 seconds, and the shortest video was five seconds.

Many of the videos were self-generated, or screenshot recordings of the boy speaking to girls believed to be aged 13 to 16, but no one can be identified from the footage. The detective said the accused recorded sexually explicit acts with other mostly unidentified girls without their knowledge. Some featured the boy masturbating and it was believed the girls mostly lived abroad.

Another video featured a child as young as eight, the court heard.

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However, not all the pictures were unique. In what the judge described as a meticulous, forensic examination, defence counsel Orla Doolin established that almost half of the images, 1,300, were duplicates.

The defence counsel pleaded with the court to accept jurisdiction. She cited an academic criminology article published in recent years, which set out how the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act, introduced in 1998, did not envisage this type of scenario of a young person with the technology available today, such as smartphones.

She said it was targeted at traditional child-pornographic offences, and would not have considered that children may have voluntarily participated.

The State contended that the case should go to the Circuit Court, which has wider sentencing powers based on the depravity of the content and material recovered from the two devices.

Defence counsel cited case law from the appeal courts.

She submitted that the Children’s Court sentencing options, a maximum of two years’ detention and a range of community sanctions, were suitable for this case, and that there was no evidence of sophistication or adult grooming involved in the material found on the teenager’s devices.

The court also heard from the defence that he would enter a guilty plea if jurisdiction were accepted. Doolin also informed the judge that the teenager has been availing of specialised counselling to assist young people who became involved in sexual offending.

The secondary school pupil was not required to give evidence to the court, which heard he had dyspraxia, dyslexia and other diagnoses, and he has career plans after his Leaving Certificate.

None of the victims could be identified, apart from one girl, but she has not made a complaint in this case.

Judge Kelly described it as a challenging matter, and following the submissions and hearing the evidence, he accepted jurisdiction.

He recorded a guilty plea and remanded the boy, who was accompanied to court by his visibly upset mother, on continuum bail, to appear again for a psychiatric and probation report to be furnished to the court ahead of sentencing.