{"id":471559,"date":"2026-05-06T16:55:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/471559\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T16:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T16:55:13","slug":"former-opw-worker-avoids-jail-for-sending-sexualised-messages-to-undercover-officer-posing-as-girl-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/471559\/","title":{"rendered":"Former OPW worker avoids jail for sending sexualised messages to undercover officer posing as girl \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Westmeath<\/a> man who sent sexualised messages to an undercover PSNI<\/a> operative posing as a 13-year-old girl has been handed a four-year suspended sentence.<\/p>\n

Former Office of Public Works<\/a> (OPW) employee Kevin Smyth (58), of Dublin Road, Castlepollard, had pleaded guilty at Mullingar Circuit Criminal Court<\/a> to charges under the 2017 Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act on dates in 2021.<\/p>\n

Finalising the case, Judge Keenan Johnson said the accused had been motivated by an unhealthy preoccupation with deviant sexual acts and the offences involved a grooming type of activity.<\/p>\n

A report from psychologist Catherine Norton stated that Smyth was at a low risk of reoffending if he continued specialist counselling. Smyth had also said he had been abused at a young age, and the perpetrator died before facing trial, which had an impact on him.<\/p>\n

The first charge stated that on July 15th, he attempted to intentionally cause a child to look at an image of himself engaging in sexual activity, for sexual gratification, or corrupting a child.<\/p>\n

He also admitted attempting to use information and communication technology applications, Skype and WhatsApp, to facilitate child sexual exploitation on dates between June and July.<\/p>\n

Smyth, who worked in river cleaning, also pleaded guilty to attempting to invite a child to sexual touching. <\/p>\n

His online pornography addiction escalated into an interest in child abuse material and led to Smyth seeking out what he believed was a 13-year-old girl.<\/p>\n

The pre-sentence report expressed concern that the man minimised his behaviour because it did not occur \u201cin real life\u201d. <\/p>\n

The judge rejected that and held that Smyth was equally culpable because he had no idea that it was not a real child. <\/p>\n

However, he noted there was no evidence of any prior crimes and that the offences occurred over a short period.<\/p>\n

It emerged that Smyth suffered significant personal consequences since the offending came to light, including losing his OPW job, depression and isolation from his family. <\/p>\n

A character reference stated that Smyth had previously been involved in sports and the Tidy Towns initiative.<\/p>\n

The judge imposed concurrent four-year prison sentences on three charges, taking two further offences into consideration. The entire sentence was suspended for eight years, subject to strict conditions. <\/p>\n

He was also ordered to pay \u20ac15,000 to the Barnardos children\u2019s charity within six months.<\/p>\n

Det Sgt Eric Naughton of the Divisional Protective Service Unit in Athlone told the judge that the PSNI sent an intelligence pack to garda\u00ed regarding a specific user on chatrooms and social media apps.<\/p>\n

Smyth initially used the username \u201cOlder Guy\u201d when communicating with what he believed was a 13-year-old girl named \u201cJess\u201d. <\/p>\n

He began asking if \u201cJess\u201d looked \u201chot\u201d in her school uniform and, using graphic terms, if she had ever let a man touch her sexually.<\/p>\n

The father of two used WhatsApp to send images of a sexual nature. <\/p>\n

Defence counsel John Shortt referred to case law that when addiction has been identified, the primary issue for the court is rehabilitation and preventing reoffending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Westmeath man who sent sexualised messages to an undercover PSNI operative posing as a 13-year-old girl has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[956,9,10,24443,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,105969,952,7,8,19871],"class_list":{"0":"post-471559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-an-garda-siochana","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-circuit-court","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-office-of-public-works","24":"tag-police-service-of-northern-ireland-psni","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories","27":"tag-westmeath"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116528685280142481","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471559","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=471559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}