Febuary 2013 Child sex text pervert guilty THIS IS THE first photograph of the security guard who has been found guilty of bombarding a 15- year-old boy with sinister sexual texts. Kenneth Shortall (48), pleaded guilty to five charges of sending indecent text messages to an innocent teen in Dublin Circuit Court last week. The chubby perv – who can regularly be seen working as a security guard at gigs in the city – sent a series of sick texts to the young boy, including: “So how is that little c**k of your’s doing?” The court heard how Shortall and his partner Colin Huggins had befriended the teenager a few months before the sick text messages began. Last week was just the latest time Shortall, with an address in Bluebell Avenue, Dublin, has come before the courts. We can reveal that Shortall is well known to gardai and was previously jailed for his role in a suspected arson attack which gutted the Ormond Hotel on Dublin’s quays. A source claimed that Shortall had also been investigated in connection with the robbery of a briefcase from Mountjoy Garda Station. “He was jailed for his role in an arson attack which gutted the Ormond Hotel in the early 1990s. But he has also been questioned in connection with other incidents, even if they have never gone to trial.” Shortall sent a total of 61 text messages to the teenager but the Director of Public Prosecutions accepted pleas to five charges. The gardai were satisfied that some of those 61 messages were crude jokes that Shortall had forwarded to a number of people, including the teenager, in a group message. During the trial, the five text messages containing the sexual messages were read out in court. The first stated; “Good boy. What are you wearing? X Yeah I am horny. Been a long day up since 6.30 X” The second read: “You always be my str8 bitch and I will ring you and ask about your c**k boxers” The third said: “So how is that little c**k of your’s doing?” The fourth read: “Good. I am still going to slag you though and still going to get your c**k” The fifth said: “I’m as horny as hell and I text you for saying what I want and I don’t hear anything from you?” Shortall was arrested in May 2011 and although he acknowledged that he had been sending text messages to the boy, he exercised his right to silence when questioned about the content in them. He told gardai that some of the texts were just slagging and banter between him and the teenager. Garda Kevin Lynn told the court that Shortall and his partner Colin Huggins had befriended the young boy and his family a number of months previously. He had been sending the messages to the boy for just over a month when the teenager’s older friend noticed them and told the boy’s mother. The gardai were alerted in February 2011, as was the HSE. Garda Lynn agreed that “nothing further arises” from either the garda or the HSE investigations. Judge Mary Ellen Ring told the court she would give Shortall “the benefit of the doubt” as to why he formed a friendship with this boy and his family in the first instance. She said she understood banter between 15-year-old boys, but said Shortall was considerably older and that fact was very concerning. “This kind of behaviour puts children and young people in a very difficult position to stop the person sending the messages and makes it difficult for them to tell someone,” the judge said. “This form of contact is very ably done in society now where children of a very young age are in possession of phones.”