Legislation wouldn’t support the creation of unit to trap paedophiles
GARDAÍ looked into setting up a sting unit to investigate online paedophiles – but were told the legislation was not in place to allow it, the Irish Mail on Sunday has learned.
It comes as detectives investigate the activities of RTÉ producer Kieran Creaven, who was last weekend arrested by British police after an alleged attempt to groom a fictitious 13-year-old girl.
A paedophile sting unit was ‘seriously considered’ by senior gardaí as far back as 2011 after an Irishman flew to Scotland to meet what he thought was a 13-year-old girl he had been grooming on Facebook.
The girl turned out to be an undercover detective and the man was arrested on landing at Edinburgh Airport.
A source told the MoS that the possibility of setting up a similar unit to the Scottish one was discussed at the time but the legislation was not in place to support it.
‘The gardaí cannot be involved in entrapment and there are issues with the legislation in this regard,’ the source said.
It is understood that the discussions about the sting unit were not raised with the Department of Justice.
Another source told the MoS it would be impossible to secure a sexual exploitation charge here against someone who had been communicating with an adult they thought was a child. The gardaí could ‘possibly’ secure a charge of child pornography if there was text showing that the alleged offender was communicating obscenely with a person they believed to be a child.
‘A text file may be enough for a child pornography charge. But a sexual exploitation charge would not be possible because there is no child being exploited.’
The source added that a confession extracted by a vigilante group would not stand up here.
‘An admission has to be free and voluntary. If you fear you are going to get your head kicked in or your back is against a wall, that is not free and voluntary and would not stand up here.’
The morning after his 2011 arrest at Edinburgh airport, Cathal Donnelly (of Carane, Ballintubber, Co. Roscommon, and Lanesborough, Co. Longford) was charged with possession of an indecent photograph of a child and travelling with the intention of having a sexual relationship with the ‘child’.
He fled while on bail but was arrested in Longford in the summer of 2011. In 2013, he was jailed here for nine years for grooming a 14-year-old girl through Facebook.