{"id":115120,"date":"2025-10-11T08:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T08:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/115120\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T08:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T08:20:08","slug":"husband-and-wife-jailed-for-9%c2%bd-years-for-defilement-and-sexual-exploitation-of-son-15-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/115120\/","title":{"rendered":"Husband and wife jailed for 9\u00bd years for defilement and sexual exploitation of son (15) \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A husband and wife have been jailed for 9\u00bd years each for the defilement and sexual exploitation of their 15-year-old son.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Judge Sinead McMullan imposed the sentences on Friday having heard earlier in the week that the father used his phone to record his wife having sex with the teenager twice on the same day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">At a Circuit Court in the midlands, Judge McMullan said the offences involved a huge breach of trust and abuse of power by the mother and father, who are both in their 30s<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cYou cannot think of a greater breach of trust,\u201d said the judge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Judge McMullan said the victim was entitled to feel safe in his home, but this entitlement was \u201cviolated in a most egregious manner\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The judge said the teenager had complied with the request to have sex with his mother because he was afraid he would be hit. She said video recording of the act was a huge aggravating factor and increased the degradation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The victim had been forced to flee his family home on a dark winter\u2019s night and cycle to his friend\u2019s house to tell what happened.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The judge said there was a \u201clevel of depravity\u201d in the offences that is \u201ctruly difficult to comprehend\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">She sentenced them each to 9\u00bd years for defilement, the same for sexual exploitation and four years for child cruelty. the father was also sentenced to six years for aiding and abetting and six years for the offence of producing child pornography. All of the sentences run concurrently. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The only compelling mitigating factors were early guilty pleas but these were tempered by probation reports that indicated both parents had limited remorse and insight into what they had done, the judge said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Neither of the accused can be named in order to protect the identity of the victim who was put in the care of Tusla after he reported the incident in early 2024. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Both parents denied the allegations \u201ccompletely\u201d when they were questioned by garda\u00ed, even when the videos were shown to them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">They were drug users, and the mother said she had previously been sexually abused herself.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The father previously had a cancer diagnosis and a life-altering operation that significantly affected his sexual functioning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">A report prepared for the court indicated the man said all of the offending was his idea.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Judge McMullan emphasised that there were no grounds for suspending any portion of the sentence. Neither of the accused had relevant previous convictions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">She wished the victim well, saying he is an intelligent and articulate person. Any fallout from the offending is due to the actions of his parents, she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A husband and wife have been jailed for 9\u00bd years each for the defilement and sexual exploitation of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,24443,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-115120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-circuit-court","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}