Could it happen to our children?
In 2006 a 48-year-old former deputy headmaster of a community college was jailed for four years after sexually assaulting a 14-year-old Derry schoolgirl he had groomed on an internet chatline.
Nigel Gordon Jackson, from Seaford, East Sussex, had gone to a lot of trouble to lure the schoolgirl, even travelling from Britain to meet her.
The Crown Court heard that Jackson had persuaded the girl to exchange photographs with him, and that he went to her home town when she gave him her address, and secretly videoed her from a car as she stood in her bedroom. The girl believed the person she had been chatting to online was an 18-year-old schoolboy.
Jackson then arranged to meet his victim. Any girl might feel safe if she was meeting somebody in a very public place, especially if she brought some friends along. But Jackson still sexually assaulted her, despite the fact that the girl brought two pals and they met in the bustling Foyleside Shopping Centre.
The court was told that Jackson was a paedophile, whose fixation with teenage girls was manageable but not curable and who still did not accept his actions were in any way wrong. He got four years for his crimes and after sentence was passed, Det Insp Tara Nicholl, of the PSNI's Care Unit in Derry, described Jackson as a "very dangerous and cunning individual".
The judge imposed a five-year ban on Jackson on all forms of unsupervised association with girls under 17.
The judge also commented that the case showed the dangers posed by internet chatrooms, adding: "Life would certainly be a great deal safer for young people if they simply communicated with each other directly."
The Irish law on the subject of internet grooming is lacking, according to child law expert Geoffrey Shannon, who was appointed by the Oireachtas to identify gaps in child law in 2007.
In a submission to the Oireachtas in November of that year, he outlined how changes in the law dealt with the offence of intentionally travelling to meet with a child, following at least two previous contacts, with the objective of sexually exploiting that child.
But he also noted that the offence was meeting with a person following grooming, but that the act of grooming itself was not covered by the legislation. He also identified another gap in Irish law that needs to be examined closely.
'A notable problem with the Irish legislation is that it only refers to the adult travelling to, or arranging to meet with, the child. It fails to contemplate the situation whereby the adult might arrange for the child to travel to meet him or her, or where the adult would take advantage of the child's travel arrangements with a third party, for example on a school tour," he said.
In his role as Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, Geoffrey Shannon highlighted the deficiencies in Irish law two years ago, but nothing has changed.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice has said the question of making it an offence to use a communications device to facilitate the commission of a sexual offence on a child is being considered in the context of a major review of the criminal laws governing sexual offences.
"As this is a wide-ranging review it is likely that it will be late 2010 before the minister is in a position to seek approval for the preparation of a bill," the spokesperson said.
Further information on internet safety can be found on watchyourspace.ie; webwise.ie; ncte.ie; www.internetsafety.ie; thinkb4uclick.ie; ispcc.ie.
Irish Independent
