‘You were meant to protect him’: man abused nephew he was babysitting

A man (40s) who filmed himself touching his sleeping nephew while talking to a stranger on a random chat website has been remanded in custody to await sentence in November.

The man, who cannot be named due to the nature of his crimes, also encouraged a boy on the same video chat website to masturbate, while turning the camera to show himself masturbating. He is also charged with taking covert videos of a young girl using the toilet on his premises.

The accused appeared before Mullingar Circuit Court, where Judge Keenan Johnson said his crimes were “very serious offences involving the exploitation of vulnerable children”.

Detective Garda David Mead, connected to Athlone Garda Station, told Cathal Ó Braonáin, BL, prosecuting, that he was appointed the investigating member of the case following a complaint made by the man’s sister.

The woman informed gardaí that she had attended an event on August 24, 2021, and asked her brother to babysit her 12-year-old son. At around 1.45am, she received a Snapchat message from her son, which read, “Mam, I need to tell you something”, but when she asked him if everything was okay, he confirmed that it was.

The woman said she thought nothing of it until she had a conversation with her brother several months later, during which he disclosed that he had befriended another 12-year-old boy and that boy would use the accused’s shower.

She challenged him on that and, after discussing with her husband the possibility that the accused might harm their children, she broached the subject with her son. He disclosed to her that his uncle had touched his penis.

In a specialist interview with gardaí, the boy disclosed that he had been asleep on the couch and he woke up to his uncle rubbing his penis with the palm of his hand over his clothes.

He said that the screen light from his uncle’s phone was shining in his face and that woke him up. On the screen was the randomised chat website, Omegle, and the accused was connected to another male via video chat.

His uncle was showing himself touching the boy while on a video chat with the “random” adult male, who was masturbating, the court heard.

“I felt like puking. I felt really scared,” the boy said.

A search warrant was obtained by gardaí and executed on May 4 at the accused’s property. He was arrested and gardaí seized his phone before conveying him to Mullingar Garda Station.

In interview, the man admitted to babysitting his nephew, but denied the offence. He claimed to be unaware of the chat site, Omegle, and suggested his sister had coached the boy to say this.

Gardaí examining the phone discovered two “covert” recordings of an 11-year-old female using the toilet at the accused’s premises. The phone was directly in front of her and the accused’s voice could be heard in the background.

The girl’s mother was made aware of the recordings and indicated she knew the accused for three years. She was shocked and said that she’d had concerns because the man had been texting her son late at night, often inviting him over.

In a victim impact statement, she said the incident had left a “deep emotional wound” and that her daughter “questions her safety even in familiar spaces”.

“This experience has stolen a piece of her innocence. No child should be burdened with the knowledge that someone has exploited their vulnerabilities,” she said.

In October 2022, the man was arrested and questioned again. He admitted the phone was his, that he knew the girl in the bathroom, and that the voice in the background was his.

He said the phone was set to automatically record when the light came on, but gardaí found that to be impossible as there was no third party software in the vicinity.

An application was made to have a number of exhibits seized from the man’s property, including a desktop PC, which was found to have another pornographic video of a child.

That video was a screen recording of an interaction carried out on Omegle between an adult male and a young boy. The male adult, who only showed a portion of the room in the video, and not his face, asked the boy his age, to which he replied 11.

The male asked the child to show his genitals and the boy responded, “I’m a boy,” to which the adult male replied “okay, even better”.

He encouraged the boy to masturbate, then pointed his camera down to show himself masturbating. The boy proceeded to do the same, but stopped a short time later.

The male’s face was not shown but gardaí compared the background of the room to the accused’s premises and found it to be identical. The video also showed a visible user logo, which is the same logo the accused used on Google Chrome.

Also on the computer were a number of anti-forensic tools used to anonymise web traffic, VPN software to anonymise online connection and eraser software that provides secure and irreversible deletion of internet history.

The man has 26 previous convictions, including criminal damage and public order, the majority for road traffic offences.

In a powerful victim impact statement the accused’s sister spoke directly to him from the stand, telling him that what he had done to her son “destroyed” her.

“You were meant to protect him. I trusted you. He loved you so much and you took advantage of him,” she said, breaking down in tears.

“He was so hurt. You devastated him. He’s mourning his uncle because the person you were to him died the moment you put your hands on him.

“I lost my brother. Someone I trusted and loved so much. You broke our family. You ripped our family apart,” she added, stating that their mother is “so in denial” and fell out with her for such a long time.

“How could you? I’d say you now have to live with the hurt you caused, but I don’t think you gave us a second thought. You dragged this out for three years. Today is the day you get justice. I hope some part of you regrets it and has sympathy for what you did to your family,” she concluded, as the accused became emotional in the custody suite.

In mitigation, Vincent Heneghan, SC, told the court that his client wants to engage in probation and that, despite the evidence, his guilty plea prevented a young boy from having to give evidence at trial.

Judge Johnson noted the seriousness of the offences, stating that “anyone who engages in this type of behaviour is going to get a significant custodial sentence”.

He commended the two mothers for the way they handled the situation and told the accused’s sister that she “can take pride in being a good mother” and that “enormous credit” was due to her for her strength.

“I can appreciate how isolated you felt. He’s fortunate to have as good a mother as you,” he said.

He indicated that he would need a psychiatric report before sentencing the accused and for that reason, adjourned the case to November 25.

“I’m remanding him in custody until then because this is the type of offending that has to attract a significant penalty because of the damage it does,” he said.

Mr Heneghan requested bail on behalf of his client, to which Judge Johnson replied: “Absolutely not. There is no question of bail being granted.”