A 34-year old man has been jailed for three years after he fathered a child with a girl aged 16.
In the case at Ennis Circuit Court, Judge Gerald Keys sentenced Anthony Conway (34) to four years with the final year suspended for the defilement of the girl on dates between September and December 2013.
Mr Conway, of Hector Street, Kilrush, was already on the Sex Offenders’ register at the time of having under-age sex with his female victim.
Judge Keys lifted the restriction on Conway not being named until now after State Counsel Stephen Coughlan BL told the court the victim - who was not in court - wanted Conway to be named.
In sentencing, Judge Keys said Conway had engaged in predatory behaviour “and took advantage of the age gap between him and the girl at the time where she could have been easily influenced”.
Judge Keys said an aggravating factor was that Conway had already been convicted of sexual acts against minors.
Previously jailed
Conway was previously jailed for four years in 2004 for five counts of buggery and 11 counts of sexual assault of five victims, four male and one female, who were aged 10 to 14 years at the time.
Those offences took place between 1996 and 2002 when Conway was aged 15 to 22.
Last year, a judge approved a rare order that Conway not have any profile on Tinder, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other social media platforms in connection with him not having any contact with the female victim in the case and their baby.
Judge Keys referred to the order in his judgment on Monday, where he said “this is not a case of a young man meeting a girl of a similar age. On the contrary, despite being twice her age and warned of her age by her father, brother and a guard, Mr Conway continued to ignore these warnings and proceeded to have a sexual relationship with her at the time when she was a child and engage in a sexual act when she had just reached her 16th birthday.”
Pleaded guilty
The judge said Conway had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity, had made admissions and had consented to providing a DNA sample, and that the State case relied entirely on DNA evidence as the victim did not co-operate with the Garda investigation.
In evidence at the sentencing hearing, Det Garda Donal Corkery said the baby was conceived shortly after the girl’s 16th birthday.
Det Corkery said the girl’s father made a complaint to the Garda in January 2015 and the girl was reluctant to help gardaí in their investigation.
In his plea, defence counsel Pat Whyms BL said: “This is not a repeat offence harking back to 1996 where the offences of buggery and sexual assault against a significant number of people took place and those offences could be described as opportunistic and predatory. This is not a predatory or opportunistic attack by one person on another.”
Mr Whyms said there was evidence of a continuing relationship with the young girl beyond her 17th birthday when such a relationship was no longer an offence.
Conway had been on remand in custody since September 16th last and Judge Keys backdated the sentence to that date.
