A FATHER of eight who plied a 15-year-old girl with 24 bottles of alcopops on the night she was celebrating her Junior Cert results and then videotaped her as he had sex with her has been jailed for 12 months.
Anthony Nagle (48), Nicholas Square, Ballymacthomas, Cork, admitted three charges including possessing child pornography, producing child pornography and using a child for sexual exploitation in Cork between September 14th and October 17th, 2005.
Garda Éimear O’Connell told Cork Circuit Criminal Court the girl had received a text message from Nagle after the girl’s mother suggested he congratulate her on her results and he offered to meet her to give her some DVDs.
The girl arranged to meet Nagle and he went and bought a dozen bottles of WKD alcopops and some beer for himself and brought her back to his flat to get the DVDs. She ended up spending the night there having sex with him.
The girl’s mother texted Nagle saying she was worried about her daughter, who was due home at 7pm, but Nagle replied that she was probably out with friends and would be okay, said Garda O’Connell.
He also gave the girl cannabis, which she smoked.
Evidence was given of him providing a commentary throughout the video, which he taped during various sexual acts.
Garda O’Connell said gardaí later recovered a tape with the girl’s name and date of the activities in a safe in the bedroom of Nagle’s flat and while it lasted just 31 minutes, it was filmed over several hours during the night.
The girl was aware of the tape but not of all its contents and was concerned Nagle would show it to others, said Garda O’Connell. The girl was so embarrassed she wrote a letter to her mother to tell her what happened but now refused to talk about it.
Garda O’Connell denied suggestions that Nagle was intoxicated at the time and said his speech in the commentary was not slurred but was clear. She rejected suggestions that the tape lasted only a short period, as was clear from the time on a clock visible on the tape.
Blaise O’Carroll SC, defending, asked if the girl did not “look like a sophisticated female in the video?” before going on to suggest that the girl was holding the video when Nagle performed oral sex on her, but Garda O’Connell disagreed with this.
Nagle apologised in court for his actions. He said that he began a relationship with a woman who later became his wife when she was just 16 and said that he genuinely believed the age of consent was 16 and not 17 and did not realise he was doing anything wrong.
He said he had been violently abused by his father as a child and later sexually abused by a man, who befriended him after he was thrown out of home, He said he was also abused by two adults at Oberstown House and he suffered from alcoholism and had also attempted suicides on countless occasions.
Mr O’Carroll said the State was seeking to characterise his client’s actions in a certain way but the girl’s statement showed she “was interested in new experiences and was a willing participant in what happened”. He asked Judge Patrick Moran to be as lenient as possible.
Judge Moran said he was aware of Nagle’s troubled background but he had subjected a young girl to a harmful experience involving various sexual activities and had made a recording of it which he had put in a safe.
Judge Moran, who had been told that producing child pornography carries a maximum sentence of 14 years, sentenced Nagle to two years in jail but suspended the last 12 months and ordered him to be put on the sex offenders register for 10 years.