Humphries jailed for grooming and sexually abusing teenage girl

Former sports journalist Tom Humphries has been jailed for two-and-a-half years for grooming and sexually abusing a teenage girl.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard Humphries’ daughter discovered texts of a sexual nature between him and the girl on an old mobile phone she had asked him to donate to charity.

Forensic analysis showed he exchanged more than 16,000 text messages with the girl over a three-month period until March 2011.

After the grooming, he met up with her and the abuse escalated to sexual acts over a 14-month period.

Humphries, aged 54, of Corr Castle, Sutton, Dublin pleaded guilty to four counts of inviting a child to participate in a sexually explicit, obscene or indecent act between January 2010 and March 2011.

The offence comes with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

He also pleaded guilty to two counts of defilement of the child at a place in Dublin between December 5, 2010, and February 19, 2011.

The offences took place when the victim was aged around 16 and Humphries was aged 47.

The charges are sample counts out of a larger number, including five for defilement and dozens for sexual exploitation.

The court heard Humphries made contact with the girl through his volunteer work with junior GAA sports teams.

Judge Karen O’Connor, yesterday, said Humphries had cultivated contact of a sexual nature with the then-teenage girl and was aware of certain vulnerabilities she had at the time.

The judge acknowledged Humphries’s guilty plea had saved his victim the ordeal of having to go through a trial.

She accepted Humphries had lost his livelihood, most of his friends and that he had been going through a difficult time with his marriage breakdown during the offending.

Observing Humphries in court, the judge said: “It would be difficult not to have some sympathy for him but that’s not to excuse his behaviour.”

She noted that “the higher the profile of a member of society, the greater the fall”.

Judge O’Connor accepted the media attention in the case had been also difficult for Humphries’ family.

She described the injured party as having “lost much of her childhood and lost her innocence in a crucial time of her life”.

The young woman, the judge noted, continued to suffer but was a strong person. The judge also said the young woman missed out on exams and life experiences and that the ordeal had left her with flashbacks, panic attacks, and blocking out of childhood memories.

At a sentencing hearing earlier this month, some of the texts exchanged were read out in court. In texts sent in the middle of the night on New Year’s Day, 2010, he asked her if she was “getting laid”.

In February 2011, he asked the girl to “be my whore”.

In her victim impact statement, the woman said she felt ashamed that she had allowed a man three times her age to manipulate her.

She said Humphries actions had resulted in the loss of her childhood and of her trust in men.

Hugh Harnett SC, defending, had handed in a number of testimonials to court, including statements about Humphries’ journalism career and involvement with GAA from former Cork hurler Donal Óg Cusack and David Walsh, a sportswriter of The Sunday Times.

Meanwhile, lawyers for Humphries told the judge they had been asked to convey the former sports journalist’s “deep shame and remorse” to the injured party and her family.

The judge said the most important aggravating feature of the case was the impact the crimes had on the injured party.

She acknowledged that the young woman described feeling guilt, shame and a sense of self-hatred that she had allowed herself to be manipulated.

“I’m not of the view that she allowed herself to be manipulated. I’m of the view that she was manipulated,” Judge O’Connor said.

She referred to a psychologist’s report on Humphries opened to her and listed various health problems, such as insomnia and cardiac arrhythmia.

She noted a psychologist’s suggestion that Humphries had a neurological cognitive disorder but said, in her view, the accused was aware of his wrongdoing.

She further pointed out Humphries had declined to receive recommended psychiatric treatment.

The judge said Humphries’s guilty plea, despite not being an early one, was a mitigating element.

Judge O’Connor said Humphries had no previous convictions, had not come to adverse garda attention since and lived a reclusive lifestyle.

The judge classed the defilement charges as on the upper end of the mid-range of offending and imposed a two-and-a-half-year term.

The exploitation charge, she noted, carries a maximum life sentence but imposed a two-year sentence to run concurrently to the two and a half year jail term.

She did not order any post-release supervision and backdated the sentence to when Humphries entered custody on October 3.