A Dublin-based sex offender who was rumbled by a UK-based online child protection vigilante group attempted to solicit sex acts from children who he believed to be as young as 13.
Michael Macken (41), who was living in tents in the north Dublin area at the time of his arrest, was already a registered sex offender when members of the unofficial group travelled from Northern Ireland and located him at the home of his parents, where he is no longer welcome, on the 20th of August 2024.
The court heard that members of this group often pose as young teenage girls to entice paedophiles into sexualised conversations online.
Detective Garda Keith Halford gave evidence of Macken’s communication with 6-7 individuals believed to be fictitious children, amidst which he engaged in “extremely graphic” conversations on dates in August 2024.
He pleaded guilty to 9 counts contrary to Section 8.1 of the Criminal Justice Sexual Offences Act 2017 for attempting to solicit a sexual act from a child, and six counts of breaching Section 8.2 of the same act for sending sexually explicit material to a child.
Prosecuting counsel, Aideen Collard BL, told the court that Macken sent pornhub links to one of the accounts, while asking others to undress, to engage in sex acts with him, to engage in sex acts on themselves, and asking them intimate questions about their bodies.
He told the profile of a child he believed to be 13 years old that she could “be an adult with him” and tried to get her away from her family so he could call her.
A girl, who he believed to be 14 years of age, was asked to send photos, to allow him to touch and kiss her chest area and to “undress” for him.
Another avatar, who he believed to be a 13-year-old girl, was told he would “let her drink”, that he sometimes drank so much that we would “fall over”, asked to send photos of her “nightie”, and sent a photo of his boxers.
He asked a child he believed to be a 12-year-old girl how big her breasts were, if they would fit in his hands, and if she ever slept with no pyjamas on.
Macken asked a girl, whom he was told was 11 years old, to send him “naked” photos. He sent this account a photo of his lower body with clothes on and told her she was “beautiful”.
He engaged in an “extremely graphic” conversation with a “young girl”, expressing that he wished to put his fingers and carrots inside her vagina, to have sex with her, and sent her two pornhub links, asking her to imitate what was depicted.
Macken discussed “sex position” with an account he believed to belong to a 13-year-old girl, telling her he would travel to the UK to be near her.
He asked another account posing as a child to “insert her fingers into her vagina when she was naked”, the court heard.
Judge Orla Crowe heard that when the vigilante group came to the Dublin address to find Macken, he was not at that time the subject of a Garda investigation.
He has three previous convictions, including two for the sexual assault of female children.
His defending counsel argued that the accused was a single man who was a cannabis and alcohol user whose actions had left his parents in a state of fear because of the public exposure of their residence.
He argued that his client was intellectually at an “extremely low functioning level” and that there had been some difficulty in completing probation reports in respect of him due to a lack of a PPS number, “until recently”.
Judge Crowe inquired as to whether the Probation Services were “appropriate” in the circumstance of the accused having a “low IQ”, before adjourning the case until the 14th of May to allow for the completion of a probation report, on which date the pleas of mitigation are to be heard.