cathal donnelly Child Sexual Abuser

March 2013 Facebook perv had sex with 14-year-old – gets nine years for abuse A VILE pervert has been jailed for nine years for grooming a 14-year-old girl for sex using Facebook and thousands of text messages.

Cathal Donnelly (42), of Carane, Ballintubber, Co Roscommon and Lanesboro, Co Longford, was given a number of lesser, concurrent sentences for the possession, production and the distribution of child pornography.

At his sentencing hearing in Roscommon Circuit Court yesterday, Judge Tony Hunt said the offences were “as serious as it gets”.

Donnelly had admitted the sexual exploitation of a minor on dates between August 1 and September 29 in 2010 at a previous court hearing.

He had also admitted possessing child pornography at Tullyrane, Ballymahon Road, Lanesboro, Co Longford on September 29 in 2010; to distributing child porn on April 30, 2010 and the production of child porn between May and August 2010.

A further 12 charges before the court were taken into consideration.

Gardai were alerted in 2010 after he was detected by Scottish police in a sting operation in Edinburgh.

Donnelly had been identified by an undercover policewoman while making contact with teenage girls on internet chat rooms.

Gardai initially discovered the child pornography on a desktop computer and two hard drives at his addresses in Roscommon and Longford.

Children aged as young as six were depicted engaging in sexual activity with adult males, and one image showed a child tied up and engaged in sex with an animal.

Gardai then discovered that Donnelly had also groomed a teenage girl for sexual acts over a period of two months in 2010.

Some of the material seized during the investigation identified the young girl carrying out sexual acts on Donnelly.

The court heard that Donnelly groomed the 14-year-old for sexual acts over an eight-week period in 2010 during which he had sent her more than 3,600 text messages.

He had come into contact with her by using Facebook and in the weeks that followed, mobile phone numbers were exchanged.

After a short time Donnelly began sending the girl explicit texts.

More than 8,000 text messages had been sent between Donnelly and the girl over a two-month period.

The girl told gardai that Donnelly had initially asked if she had “done it before”, which she took to mean sex.

He had asked if she would give him oral sex and, because she felt intimidated, she had replied, “Yes”.

When he told her he was 39 she had felt “sick” that it had been her first sexual experience.

Donnelly made full admissions when arrested.

The girl declined to make a victim impact statement.

Noting Donnelly’s clear intentions in “prematurely sexualising” the girl, Judge Hunt said: “He groomed her and engaged in an advanced form of sexual contact with a young girl.

This was not spontaneous, it was planned.” He said an aggravated feature of the case was the explicit photos of Donnelly and the girl, saying he stored the images “for future gratification and for that of others of like mind”.

Donnelly was ordered to attend the Probation Service for post-release supervision for four years.

He was further directed to stay away from accessing the internet and refrain from befriending, associating with or otherwise engaging with people under 18.