A 22-year old Shannon man yesterday pleaded guilty to charges in connection with uploading 19 girls’ Facebook profile pictures to a pornographic site.
At Ennis District Court, Evan Meehan of Dernish Lawn, Shannon appeared in connection with uploading 30 photos of local teenage girls to a pornographic site between October 2013 to the end of June 2014.
The 30 charges relate to 19 girls with 17 having Shannon addresses with two other girls living in the nearby villages of Sixmilebridge and Newmarket-on-Fergus.
All of the girls were Facebook friends of Mr Meehan while most went to the same secondary school in Shannon as him.
Mr Meehan acted alone in the crime and a number of the captions accompanying the photos described the girls engaging in various sexual acts with their fathers.
The alleged offences took place during a period when Mr Meehan was aged 19 and 20.
The offences came to light after a number of girls presented themselves to Shannon Garda Station on June 30th 2014.
Det Garda Paul Coleman said that the girls arrived at the station after discovering that Facebook profile pictures that they uploaded to their personal Facebook pages had been uploaded to a pornographic site without their knowledge or consent.
Det Coleman said that sexually explicit captions describing activities of a sexual nature were added to the girls’ photographs.
Det Coleman said: “The alleged injured parties were happy to upload the pictures themselves to Facebook. They were in no way lewd or anyway suggestive in the poses contained. "
Mr Meehan removed all of the offending images after being ordered to do so by Gardai.
In court yesterday, solicitor for Mr Meehan, Stiofán Fitzpatrick said that his client would be pleading guilty to all of the counts.
Mr Fitzpatrick asked that Judge Patrick Durcan order a pre-sentence Probation Report.
Arising from an earlier ruling by Judge Durcan that the case is to be heard in the district court, the penalties available to the judge on conviction include a prison term of up to 12 months or a fine not exceeding €600 on each count.
In the case, Mr Meehan has pleaded guilty to 30 times of knowingly making a false report tending to show that an offence had been committed contrary to section 12 of the Criminal Law Act 1976.
Mr Meehan made no reply to each of the charges after caution. Judge Durcan ordered that the names of the victims in the case not be published.
Judge Durcan adjourned the case to February 1st next for sentence to Ennis District Court and for the completion of the Probation Report.
