Man found guilty of offering boy (13) €50 for sex

A MAYO man has been found guilty of sexual exploitation after he approached a 13-year-old schoolboy on the street and offered him €50 to have sex with him.
The 63-year-old, man who cannot be named due to reporting restrictions, was found guilty by a jury after a two-day trial at last week’s sitting of Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court.
The incident occurred on January 13, 2016, at around 4.30pm, when the teenager was walking home alone from school in a Mayo town and was followed by the defendant. The court heard that the man asked the boy: “Do you want to earn some money?” before offering €50 for sex. When the boy declined, the man said it was a pity, as he was a ‘lovely ladeen’.
The victim, who also cannot be identified, was interviewed by a specialist child interviewer following the incident, and the video of the interview was played to the jury.
During the interview, the child said he had gone into a shopping centre to use the toilet and that a man followed him in. When he left the toilet, he said, he went into a supermarket and the man followed him, and ‘didn’t take his eyes off me’.
When he left the shopping centre, he said he was walking home when the man approached him from behind. The victim, who is now 15, said the man asked him if he would have sex with him for money. He said he noticed a €10 note in his right hand.
When asked how he felt, he said he was shocked and scared and he picked up the pace and walked away from the man, who turned back in the direction from where he came. When asked to describe the man, he said he had dark hair, a red cardigan, blue jeans, hiking boots and a moustache.
The boy went home, and when his mother arrived home, he told her the exact story and they went to the Gardaí.
CCTV footage of the boy entering the shopping centre was shown and the boy identified himself and the man to the jury. A camera from a local authority building showed the boy walking down the street close to where the incident occurred, followed by a man. Shortly afterwards, the man was seen walking back in the direction he came from.
Mr Brendan McDonagh, counsel for the defendant said that the man identified in the footage had a blue jacket, which was never mentioned by the boy in his statements to gardaí. He also claimed the man on the CCTV did not appear to have a moustache.
When Mr McDonagh put it to the boy that the person he had identified on CCTV and the man who propositioned him could not have been the same person based on his description, he agreed.
However, when reexamined by Mr Pat Reynolds, counsel for the Prosecution, he said he was happy to say the person on CCTV was the person who propositioned him and stood by it.
The mother of the boy told the court she found her son sitting on the couch when she came home from work when he should have been at football training. When she went to speak to him, she said he started crying and said he was offered €50 for sex by a man with a moustache. She said he explained what happened and they then went to the local garda station.
When the man was arrested by gardaí, he was questioned and asked about the allegation against him. When he was asked did he ask the boy to have sex with him, he said ‘I don’t recall that day’. When asked if he denied offering €50 to the boy, he answered, ‘I can’t recall’.
Mr McDonagh claimed that the identification process was ‘fundamentally flawed’ and a jury could not find his client guilty based on the evidence.
However after a short deliberation, the jury found the man guilty. He was remanded on bail for sentencing at Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court’s October 25 sitting.