Give a child a phone and her bedroom door is open

WE’RE just two sick f***s who are totally cool with being sick f***s.’ That was Matthew Horan, a 26-year-old Dublin paedophile, talking to another Irish pervert online.

What you don’t get, from the blackand-white Garda transcript of the men’s conversation, is any sense of their tone. If you didn’t know better, you might hear it as conflicted, resigned, and maybe despairing.

If you still cling to the myth that paedophiles are a breed apart, full of selfloathing and burdened by shameful urges they can’t quell, you might even hear remorse. You might imagine that paedophiles are troubled by their repugnant desires and anguished by their abnormal sexuality. You would be wrong.

Most are not ashamed of their appetites; they’re proud of them. They don’t consider themselves dysfunctional; they reckon they’re pioneers of sexual liberation. In their parallel world, bolstered by conversations with likeminded men, they are brave, openminded and enlightened, and we are backward, prudish and repressed.

They scoff between themselves at our dumb gullibility. They mock parents’ naivety, and gloat about the imagined sexual wiles of tiny children.

And I know, because I’ve heard them talk. And that ‘totally cool with being sick f***s’ line of Horan’s brought back a chilling memory of a taped conversation that turned my guts.

It was years ago, long before online access made these exchanges so much easier to have and harder to detect. A lawyer friend, who specialised in labour law, was engaged by a company worried about a manager’s behaviour.

He’d come into the office, spend hours on the phone, and disappear for the day.

They suspected embezzlement and, on my friend’s advice, they hired a private detective to tap his phone for proof. Instead of the financial chicanery they were expecting, though, the stunned employers listened to hours and hours of vile and explicit dialogues between their man and other paedophiles in Dublin.

They shared hunting grounds: they’d hang around outside playgrounds and convince themselves that little girls were deliberately displaying their knickers, as they climbed slides or played on swings, for their greedy eyes. ANOTHER retiree this week, aside from Elton John, was Neil Diamond, who announced he was hanging up his guitar after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Credit to him for revealing that, since he really didn’t have to – he is 77 and entitled to put his feet up without needing a reason. But he felt fans deserved an explanation as he was in the middle of his 50th anniversary tour – and now Parkinson’s charities are benefiting as fans are donating their refunded tickets to help fight the disease. They regaled one another with detailed descriptions of things they’d done to children in their care.

These weren’t the preying strangers of urban legend; these were trusted uncles, dads, family friends seizing their chances with bribes and threats, and getting off on the thrill of secrecy and near-misses.

Frustrated by the gardaí’s inability to act, because the men’s talk was no proof of criminality, my friend gave me the tapes in the hope that even anonymous media exposure might scare these guys off.

I don’t remember if there was any real fall-out from that Sunday Tribune story, complete with excerpts of the exchanges. But the tone of those men’s voices, as they crowed and gloated, stayed with me, and I heard it again in Matthew Horan’s words this week.

That’s what parents still don’t get about paedophiles, and that’s what makes us and our children so vulnerable to their guile and their tenacity. They’ll abuse kids because they don’t believe it’s wrong.

Back then, they had to rely on a secret network of phone contacts and messages left on toilet walls to communicate – now the Horans and his ilk can mingle at will at the stroke of a key.

Then, they had to hang around outside schools and playgrounds to indulge their sick fantasies; today, they hook up with little girls online, and cajole and bully them into sending nude pictures. Horan was so desperate for his fix that he was willing to risk one victim, a girl of 11, killing herself to escape his demands.

Then, they had to meet up to swap pictures of children – now these images are shared online. Then, they had to ‘babysit’ for relatives and friends to get unsupervised access to children; now, they lure them to secret meeting places with promises of shopping trips and treats, as Kieran Creaven did. Back then, making real-life contact with a potential victim was risky and difficult; today, it’s a breeze.

And that’s because parents, still ignorant of the mindset and the methods of men like Matthew Horan and Kieran Creaven, are handing them unfettered access to the youngest of victims. They don’t need to prowl and linger anymore, so they pass unnoticed among us – Kieran Creaven was the very epitome of the guy next door.

These men are dangerous, ruthless, cunning and seemingly convinced that they are the free spirits and we are the bigots. And, when you give your child a smartphone, you’re opening the bedroom doors and inviting them in.