A woman who groomed a 14-year-old boy for two years before defiling him has been jailed for a year by a judge who said she was highly culpable as she knew well he was a vulnerable minor at the time.
Pamela Lonergan (43), of Treanmanagh, Glenbeigh, Co Kerry, pleaded guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to four counts of defilement of the teenager at various locations in Cork and Kerry between January 26th, 2008 and April 16th, 2009.
Det Sgt Kevin Long, of the Garda Protective Services Unit, told Cork Circuit Court that the teenager met Lonergan in 2006 when he was 14 and she was 26. While they hardly spoke on the first occasion, he received a text message from her a day or two later.
“She told him that she had gotten his number from a friend of his and she introduced herself and spoke about his laugh,” said Det Sgt Long, adding that the teenager said he was 15 but later revealed to Lonergan that he was just 14 while she had disclosed to him from the start that she was 26.
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Det Sgt Long said Lonergan and the boy began texting back and forth and “from there the texting was constant, a never-ending stream”. He said initially the relationship was platonic and Lonergan was a welcome distraction for the teenager as his mother had left the family home.
“She told him to be secretive about the texting and the calling and how close they were. She told him that they had a special connection and they were on the phone almost all night every night. As a consequence, the boy missed a lot of school because he was so tired,” the detective said.
He said the relationship began to change when the boy turned 15, with the messages becoming romantic. They would hug and hold hands but Lonergan cooled things for a few months after someone on a camping trip challenged her about being so close to the teenager, he added.
He said that Lonergan resumed regular contact levels months later. Knowing that the boy had never kissed a girl and was still a virgin, Lonergan told him that she wanted his first sexual experience to be with her and initiated phone sex with the boy, Det Sgt Long added.
The court heard there was no physical sexual relationship between them until the boy turned 16, when he began visiting her in Kerry. They met around once a month and had full sexual intercourse about a dozen times while he was still a minor.
This continued until the teenager went abroad aged 18. When he returned, their relationship became official until the then 20-year-old broke it off in the summer of 2012, when Lonergan was 32.
The victim made a complaint to gardaí in 2021 and Lonergan was arrested on October 19th, 2022. She acknowledged certain pertinent matters such as previous addresses and jobs, but exercised her right to silence in relation to the sexual acts.
The young man read his victim impact statement which outlined how he became dependent on Lonergan after she introduced herself to him at a time when he was at a low ebb emotionally. He said he became hugely dependent on her and his education suffered.
“She entered my life as my family home was being torn apart and my mother was moving out. I was extremely vulnerable and lonely and even though Pamela’s messages felt unusual, the attention was appealing,” he said.
He said there was a “hot/cold” pattern to their communication which continued for years and “created great emotional instability for me”.
The young man said Lonergan began moving the relationship on to a sexual level, asking him if he had any questions about the female body and talking about sexual experiences with previous boyfriends.
He said thay when they began having phone sex and later physical relations, he was made to feel responsible.
“In public, I had to act like we were just casual friends. If I said anything that insinuated that we were closer than that, Pam would react with anger. My shame intensified and meeting her standards of behaviour, became more and more difficult. The secrecy was corrosive.”
The young man said the relationship proved “a toxic anchor” in his life even after it ended. He said he struggled with addictions to alcohol and pornography and had trust issues in his relationships before, at the age of 29, reporting the matter to the gardaí and seeking professional help.
“My personal rock bottom was when I kicked my wife out of our home in 2021 and, as I stood there alone, it hit me - I was petrified of being wounded again so it was safer to be on my own,” he said.
He said he had received incredible support and had embarked on a new career where he was going to use his experience to help others. “I’m using this experience as a fuel for positive change. So Pam, you can keep the abuse, the shame, the guilt – it is not mine,” he added.
Pleading for leniency, Emmet Boyle BL, for Lonergan, said his client, who was deeply religious, had accepted her guilt and was remorseful as evidenced by the fact that, as a Jehovah’s Witness, she had confessed to her congregation two years before gardaí were alerted.
Judge Colin Daly noted that Lonergan accepted she knew the victim was underage when she embarked on the inappropriate relationship. He also noted the impact her offending had on the victim.
He said the aggravating factors in the case included the significant age disparity, the fact that Lonergan groomed the youth and the fact that the offending went on for a sustained period.
Mitigating factors, he said, included Lonergan’s previous good character and the absence of previous convictions. He also accepted her expressions of remorse and contrition as genuine.
He said the offending merited a custodial and sentenced her to 20 months in jail, with the final eight months suspended.
