Man coerced teens into sex acts online

A young man who posed as a teenage girl on Facebook in order to sexually exploit underage boys has been sentenced to five years with 18 months suspended.

Raymond Brennan, aged 22, was 19 when he convinced three boys aged between 13 and 14, to send him sexually explicit pictures of themselves and to masturbate via an online video link.

He threatened to publish explicit images of one victim online if the child didn’t send him more.

Brennan also met up with one victim and had sex with the 14-year-old boy. Before targeting the boys on Facebook he had already been abusing another boy, forcing the child to have anal sex.

Brennan later told gardai he didn’t think there was anything wrong with what he was doing and that he was exploring his sexuality.

Judge Mary Ellen Ring said this exploration became exploitation and Brennan showed no regard for the damage and suffering caused by his actions.

The offending began in 2008 while Brennan was a minor but continued into 2012. Brennan pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to 13 sample counts, including sexual assault, defilement and defilement of a child under 15 years old between 2008 and 2010.

The sexual abuse began when his victim was aged 11 or 12 and Brennan was 15. The court heard the victim has suffered from depression and anxiety as a result of the abuse and it has had a huge negative effect on his family.

Brennan also admitted three charges of exploitation of a child and two counts of defilement of a child in Dublin on various dates between April and October 2012.

Finally he pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and to 12 counts of sexually exploiting another child at his home in Dublin on dates between March 18 and October 12, 2012. This exploitation involved coercing the victim to engage in explicit acts over the internet.

Judge Ring said these were very serious offences and involved abusing the trust of vulnerable people. She noted that he is still of a very young age, had apologised to the victim and admitted to all the offences.

He is assessed at being at a medium risk of reoffending.

Judge Ring backdated the sentence to June 25 last, when he went into custody, and ordered that he is not to engage with social media sites without the knowledge of the Probation Services.

The court previously heard that in March 2012 Brennan set up the two false Facebook profiles and sent out random friend requests to males aged around 13 and 14. Brennan targeted the other users by searching random names and adding in those he liked or thought were “nice looking”. He denied their ages were relevant or that the age on the fake account was designed to attract young teenagers.

About 350 people accepted the friend requests sent from the two fake accounts. The offender then began sending them private messages which began normally but would become more sexual.

In one case he convinced a 14-year-old boy, who has Asperger’s syndrome, to talk about his underwear and to masturbate on a webcam. The victim believed he was communicating with a 14-year-old girl. The man asked this victim if he would “do stuff on camera” with his 10-year-old brother but the victim refused. He then asked the victim to masturbate on camera and the victim did.

The offences came to light when the mother of the first victim checked her son’s iPad and his Facebook messages and saw the sexually explicit conversations.