Nicola talks to David about explicit messages
Full of fake sincerity and mock concern, online predators target young teens after first winning their trust by setting themselves up as father figures.
As part of an undercover investigation, the Sunday World confronted four of these men over the space of a two-week period last month.
They all answered an advert on the popular Craigslist classified ad website and set about slowly – but systematically – winning the trust of an apparently vulnerable 15-year-old girl.
Despite being told repeatedly that the teen was two years below the age of consent, they all continued to send sexualised messages before finally arranging to meet her for a ‘coffee’ in Dublin city centre.
Like most online predators, Andre denied he was attracted to underage girls and claimed he had no plans to “do anything” when confronted by the Sunday World.
As soon as he spotted our team approaching, Andre quickly threw his mobile phone into the River Liffey – presumably fearing he was about to be arrested.
The 29-year-old made no effort to deny that he had been planning to meet the girl, instantly confessing to doing something “stupid”.
In a bizarre speech – elements of which were repeated by each of the men confronted by this newspaper – Andre even tried to claim he was trying to protect the young girl.
He said:
“I was going to have a coffee and a chat with her about what she is doing. I’m not the normal type of person you’d write about. I’ve never done anything like this before.
“I have a sister that age and ultimately, I was just coming to [warn the ‘girl’]. Girls like that end up in the mountains… it’s all wrong. I just wanted to have a chat to her, about what she was doing.”
Despite Andre’s insistence that he was nothing more than an angel of mercy, his text and email records tell a different story.
After being told the girl was just 15 years old, he instantly emailed back saying: “A little young.”
But instead of cutting all contact, like many of the other men, shortly after he sent another message saying: “Do u have any pics?”
Just two days after being told the girl was under the age of consent, Andre sent her a full-length naked picture of himself.
He told our team: “I didn’t realise how old she was at that stage. And I said it a couple of times about her age. Like I said, I was coming to meet that girl to have a chat to her – nothing more. I had no intentions.
“I even said it to her in the email, ‘look, we’re only having coffee’. I haven’t done anything – I wasn’t going to do anything.”
But despite all his protestations, chillingly Andre finally admitted he was considering having sexual contact with the young girl.
“She didn’t look as young as she said in the picture. Look, it’s temptation, but I never would’ve went through with it.”
John – who is in his mid-40s – also kept it clean during his email contact with the young girl. However, as soon as he managed to get his hands on her phone number, he stepped it up a notch.
At all times, he was told he was talking to a 15-year-old who was still in school, lived with her mother and had no friends.
But John still told her that he was “horny” and said he couldn’t wait to teach her anything that she liked.
Andre speaks to our reporters
“Really excited bout meetin u, cant wait till we break the ice n I become ur teacher/lover, will do everything with u xx”
But when our team confronted him outside a cafe near Connolly Station, the west Dublin man was not feeling so open about his desires.
When asked if he believed he was doing something wrong, he said: “Well, obviously. Yeah.”
But he bizarrely tried to claim he did not believe the girl he was meeting was 15 years old – despite the fact that he was repeatedly told by text and email that this was the case.
“I didn’t really believe it, that it was true, as such. I didn’t know, you know that kind of way. Obviously, you don’t f**kin’ know.”
When asked about the highly sexualised messages he sent to the young girl, John said: “That was [me] going with it. I didn’t actually know, that was the perception.”
Amazingly, he tried to claim he was motivated by boredom rather than sexual attraction to children.
“It’s probably hanging around at home bored. Just have a f**king coffee, f**king blah blah – you know that kinda way. That would have been it. Yeah, that was the thing. I was never 100 per cent that it was true. Boredom – it was something different.”
When quizzed if he believed he would have had sex with the girl, he said: “I don’t really think so.”
Roly-poly perv David was the most cautious of all the men we dealt with in the course of our investigation.
He had twice cancelled an arranged meeting and was also the only one who insisted on talking to our ‘teen’ at regular intervals over the weeks in which we communicated.
However, late at night, David was less guarded and at one point sent a text saying: “Don’t suppose you have a naughty pic you can send me... like with some clothes missing???”.
He had asked her age repeatedly and at one point asked whether she cared that he was 35.
At one point when he cancelled a meeting, he first claimed it was because of work commitments, then admitted he was married and then took on a fatherly role, telling our girl to be careful about meeting anyone from the internet.
But then, unprovoked, he got back in touch and repeatedly tried to arrange meetings around his work schedule, while our ‘teen’ told him she had to work around school.
At one point during a phone conversation, he begged to meet up.
“I’m getting in a bit of trouble at school. I can’t miss any more days,” our girl told him.
He replied: “Bad, bad girl.”
During another conversation, he quizzed our teen about “how far” she had gone with boys. When she said she had never had sex with anyone, he told her that wouldn’t be a problem.
When we eventually did meet David, he had plenty of excuses ready. “
“I was meeting her to tell her she shouldn’t be doing it. She is just risking herself. I can explain. She said on the phone she was 15 and I said, ‘no, it’s not happening’. I was meeting her to say how dangerous it was.”
He told us that having asked for intimate pictures of the girl, his conscience had got at him.
“I was caught up in the moment. I decided it was too much for a whole range of reasons. I never met young girls before. It all came on me like that, a snap of the finger. But today was to say to her, ‘don’t do it and stop, don’t meet people’.”
Like Andre, Rob was also fond of sending naked pictures of himself to the underage girl. Within 20 minutes of getting the girl’s phone number, he had sent a picture of his erect penis to our phone and asked for a topless picture of her in return.
He also told her that he was as “hard as a rock” with the thought of meeting up.
When challenged by our team outside a city-centre cafe, Rob admitted that he knew he had crossed the line.
He said: “I was [thinking about what I was doing] as I was standing there, getting on the bus. It’s my own doing – I would be the first one to admit it.”
However, he denied he planned to engage in any sexual activity, saying he was just planning to “hang around town, that was it”.
Rob was unable to come up with any real defence of his actions, saying he was just trying to “pass the time”.
Like all the predatory men, he claimed it was his first time meeting a young girl, saying: “I never had any luck [on the internet], to be honest. This would have been the first one. I’ve no criminal record, I’ve kept my nose clean, it was more curiosity.”
He added: “I’m sort of glad [I was caught], in a weird sort of a way, it wasn’t sitting right. It’s put to bed now.”