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MOST teens accused of carrying out sexual offences have been rejected from a gardaí-led intervention programme.
The Journal Investigates can reveal how last year, 92% of 12-18 year-olds referred to the Garda Youth Diversion Programme (YDP) for alleged sexual crimes were found “unsuitable” for the prosecution alternative.
Of the 362 cases of children and young people accused of sexual offending referred to the YDP in 2024, 335 were rejected and sent back to gardaí for prosecution – the highest proportion in 14 years.
The revelations come just months after judges expressed concern on the number of minors appearing before courts on serious sexual offence charges where pornography-use was deemed a factor in offending.
Sexual abuse support services here have also reported a worrying rise in peer-on-peer abuse, warning online porn consumption is “changing the trajectory” of young people’s lives.
Under the Children Act 2001, a young person who comes to the attention of An Garda Síochána because of alleged criminal behaviour, is required by law to be considered for a diversion program.
This is primarily offered through YDP, which offers juveniles opportunities to address offending behaviour, develop positive skills and remain out of the criminal justice system.
Referrals to the YDP can only be accepted if a young person accepts responsibility for the offending, which can range from inappropriate digital communications to sexual assault.
Those deemed suitable are assigned a juvenile liaison officer within their garda district and offered restorative justice programs, counselling, and educational interventions.
Certain offences, particularly those involving serious sexual harm, are not eligible to be dealt with under the programme and are also rejected.
It is unclear exactly why so many cases were referred back for prosecution in 2024 as the YDP does not release a breakdown on offence type or reason for rejection.
It said this was due to “significant data protection” concerns, which could “potentially” identify offenders or “most importantly” victims.
The Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) said this limits scrutiny on whether the State’s response to youths accused of sexual offending is “proportionate”.
“All that these figures tell us is that only one in ten referrals for sexual offences were deemed suitable for diversion,” IPRT executive director Saoirse Brady told The Journal Investigates.
“We don’t know the nature of these offences or the reasons why they were deemed unsuitable, so that limits our ability to determine whether responses were proportionate, evidence-based, and effective.”
Yesterday, we revealed how a Tusla-led support service for children presenting “sexually harmful behaviour” has significantly increased in the last year.
In 2024, 83 referrals were made to the National Inter-Agency Prevention Programme of children aged between 3 and 17 years old compared to 58 the previous year.
Analysis carried out by The Journal Investigates has found that between 2010 and 2024, over 5,100 cases involving youths accused of committing sexual crimes were referred to YDP.
Of those, just 1,545 cases were deemed “suitable” for the programme, meaning almost 70% of referrals were reverted to gardaí for prosecution.
“Ultimately, the approach to youth justice must balance accountability with rehabilitation,” Brady added.
“Where young people engage in harmful behaviour are held to account, they must also be encouraged to engage with appropriate supports and provided with the opportunity to change.
“If implemented effectively, access to diversion programmes with tailored supports and early intervention initiatives will lead to better futures for young people and safer communities for all.”
Charity One in Four, which offers counselling for adult child sexual abuse survivors as well as offender intervention programmes, said it’s received risk management referrals for teenagers who have committed sexual crimes.
Julie Brown, clinical director of the Ireland-wide charity, said online pornography was escalating criminal behaviour amongst young people.
“For any of the younger men we have worked with, who have been arrested for sexual offences, they would have all started watching pornography at a very young age,” she said.
“And I can’t emphasise enough how much their lives are impacted.
Young men are changing the direction of the course of their lives because they’ve committed a sexual offence.
Analysis of public court records show that over the last year, at least 14 serious sexual offence cases involving youths have come before Irish courts where pornography-use was deemed a factor in offending.
Of these, the defendants were mostly aged between 14 and 16 at the time of the offending. The youngest offender, jailed for the repeated rape of a younger relative, was aged just 13-years-old when the attacks took place.
Each case involved different charges, ranging from possession and distribution of child abuse images, child exploitation, sexual assault and rape.
In one court hearing last October, a judge warned that the early consumption of pornography had led a now 26-year-old man to view his young relative as the “human equivalent of a blow up sex doll”.
The court heard the man raped and sexually assaulted his young cousin over a four-year period when he was aged between 15 and 19 years old. His young victim was just six-years-old when the abuse began.
The man, who cannot be identified due to his age at the time of the attacks and to protect the identity of his victim , had been addicted to pornography as a young boy, Cork’s Central Criminal Court heard.
Jailing him for four-and-a-half years, Ms Justice Mary Ellen Ring said that young men must realise that their younger relatives are not “sex toys there for their experimenting as a result of what they have seen on the screen”.
The judge warned that parents must be cognisant of the fact that pornography is available “at the click of a computer key” or a “phone tap”.
Ms Justice Ring added that parents and guardians shouldn’t “turn a blind eye to the potential that they could turn up in a court with a son or daughter who has done the unthinkable”.
Just days after this court hearing, another senior judge warned about the dangers of early pornography consumption in a separate serious sexual assault case.
Sitting at Dublin’s Central Criminal Court, Mr Justice Paul Burns said that there appears to be an increasing number of cases of young men before the courts charged with sexual offences, where access to online pornography is a factor.
He was speaking during the sentencing of a 22-year-old man who admitted to carrying out a series of violent sexual assaults against his then girlfriend. Both were aged 16 at the time of the offending.
The court heard from the young man’s defence lawyer, Maurice Coffey QC, who noted there appear to be “more cases of children perpetuating sexual offences against children”.
Coffey added that a “common thread in a lot of these cases is that perpetrators have a certain lack of maturity and have access and exposure to pornographic material”.
Mr Justice Burns imposed a sentence of four years, with the final 12 months suspended on strict conditions for three years.
The judge said he “wonders” if more could be done to educate young men about the importance of consent, the impacts on victims and the consequences for the perpetrators.
The judge’s comments were made just over six years on from the murder of 14-year-old schoolgirl Ana Kriégel, whose violent death was hoped by many to be a watershed moment in regulating children’s access to porn in Ireland.
Ana’s badly beaten body was discovered at an abandoned farmhouse in Lucan, Co Dublin in May 2018.
The schoolgirl, from Leixlip, Co Kildare, had been choked, beaten, sexually assaulted and struck with a concrete block in the lead up to her death.
Two 14 year-old boys – referred to in court as Boy A and Boy B due to their ages – were later found guilty of her murder. Both had denied the charges.
Boy A, who was 13 at the time of the attack, was also found guilty of carrying out an aggravated sexual assault on Ana.
Following the verdicts, it transpired that gardaí found thousands of pornographic images on Boy A’s phone, some of which depicted sexual violence.
The prosecution had sought to put evidence of the violent pornography, along with internet searches made by Boy A, before the jury.
However, Mr Justice Paul McDermott excluded the evidence after ruling it would be prejudicial to the teenager’s case.
Boy A was later sentenced to life imprisonment, with no possibility of release for 12 years. Boy B was sentenced to at least 15 years in prison with no possibility of release for eight years.
In the aftermath of the high-profile trial, it was revealed how two government departments clashed over who should be responsible for laws to stop children from accessing pornography online.
The availability and ease of accessing violent and extreme pornography online is creating child perpetrators of abuse, according to One in Four.
“Traditionally, the thought would have been that pornography one views kind of reflects one’s preferences,” Brown told The Journal Investigates.
“Whereas now, I think it’s becoming increasingly understood that actually pornography is shaping the preferences, and not the other way around.”
With the risks caused by youth consumption of pornography becoming “more known”, Brown said there has been more of a “push” for organisations to support schools and parents on the issue.
“When people get to us, obviously they’re on the far end of the continuum there,” she said.
“We had a young man who literally had just graduated with a degree, he will never be able to work in his field.
“I’d another who was doing his Leaving Cert. He asked me if he would be arrested in front of his class.”
The clinical director said that as well as causing extreme damage to victims, young perpetrators of abuse also cause harm to their own families.
“You’ve mothers and fathers who had no knowledge that this is happening until the guards come to the door,” she said. “It’s almost like the bottom falls out of their world, and now they’ve got a before and after.
“I just think the level of harm for everybody is really, really marked. And I’m not sure what good the nature of pornography that is currently online does for anyone, except the people who profit from it.”
In October, media regulator Coimisiún na Meán, adopted its Online Safety Code, bringing binding rules for video-sharing platforms to protect users, especially children, from harmful content, including age verification, parental controls, and reporting mechanisms.
Since November, platforms such as Facebook, must use robust age assurance, such as verifying a passport photo, as “merely asking users whether they are over 18 will not be enough”, the regulator said.
Fines of €20m or 10% of a company’s turnover could apply for breaches of the rules.
However, the code applies only to video-sharing platforms which have their EU headquarters in Ireland.
Critics said the new rules don’t go far enough, with Independent Senator Rónán Mullen stating at the time that the code fails to meet “the threshold needed” to protect children from online pornography.
In a statement to The Journal Investigates, Coimisiún na Meán said it is “committed to ensuring a media landscape that upholds the rights, wellbeing and development of children and their safe engagement with content”.
A spokesperson said that while ‘Part A’ of the code contains a “general obligation” for video-sharing platforms established in Ireland to use age verification, Part B – effective from this July – goes further.
Those rules will require video-sharing platforms established in Ireland, whose terms and conditions do not preclude the uploading or sharing of adult-only video content, to implement effective age assurance measures to ensure that this type of content cannot normally be seen by children.
“It is up to the video-sharing platform service to implement the most effective systems based on the nature of their services,” Coimisiún na Meán added.
“We will ensure that the approaches they implement are proportionate and effective, and respect the right to privacy. ”
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Reporter: Patricia Devlin • Editor: Maria Delaney • Social Media: Cliodhna Travers • Main Image Design: Lorcan O’Reilly
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