Former teacher admits engaging in sexual conversations with schoolgirl on social media

The schoolgirl’s mother examined her daughter’s Instagram account and discovered hundreds of texts between John Murphy, 42, and the girl which were “peppered with explicit sexual conversations”.

John Murphy was a teacher of mathematics and science in a school in Tallaght before he resigned in 2022. Picture: Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin

A teacher who engaged in sexually explicit online conversations with a young schoolgirl for over a year, including asking her for naked pictures of herself, has had “a career thrown away through fantasy”, a court has heard.

John Murphy, aged 42, a married father-of-one from Ferncourt Crescent, Ballycullen, Co Dublin, pleaded guilty at a sitting of Wicklow Circuit Criminal Court to a charge of the sexual exploitation of a child between June 2017 and June 2018.