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Updated 5.16 pm
FORMER IRISH TIMES sports journalist Tom Humphries has admitted grooming a teenage girl by sending her thousands of sexually explicit text messages before going on to meet her for sexual acts.
Humphries (54) of Corr Castle, Sutton, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to four counts of inviting a child to participate in a sexually explicit, obscene or indecent act between January 2010 and March 2011.
He also pleaded guilty to two counts of defilement of the child at a place in Dublin, the girl was 16 at the time.
The court heard that Humphries made contact with the girl through his volunteer work with junior sports teams.
After months of grooming the girl through text messages of an increasingly sexual nature, Humphries met with the girl and brought her to his flat.
They got into bed clothed before he stripped her and performed oral sex on her and got her to perform oral sex on him.
That was in December 2010, when she was aged 16 and Humphries was aged 47. There were repeated instances of these acts of defilement over the next 14 months.
Garda Jarlath Burke told the court that the offending came to light in March 2011, when Humphries’ daughter asked him to donate one of old mobile phones to charity.
When she later turned the phone on she saw the texts of a “highly sexualised nature” to someone who appeared to be a young girl. She became very concerned and alerted her mother, then the estranged wife of Humphries.
His wife and brother-in-law confronted Humphries the next day and Humphries immediately became distraught and talked about killing himself.
This threat was taken seriously and Humphries was hospitalised, where he did make a suicide attempt. He was transferred to a St Patrick’s mental health hospital where he made another suicide attempt.
The charges are sample counts out of a larger number, including five of defilement and dozens of sexual exploitation.
Humphries sent the first text message to the girl in December 2008. She later told gardaí that she didn’t know how he got her number but presumed it was through her GAA club.
For months the texts consisted of general conversation about her schooling and life.
In 2009 he sent her two images of his penis. She became upset about these and deleted them immediately.
She told him not to send anything like this again and he reverted to sending non-sexual texts. A year later the texts became increasingly sexual again with Humphries asking the girl about her sexual experience.
He then began asking to meet up with her for sexual contact.
She said she was more comfortable at this point with these exchanges.
Forensic analysis by investigators of a number of mobile phones used by Humphries showed that over 16,000 texts were exchanged back and forth over one three month period before March 2011.
Some of these texts were read out in court.
In texts sent in the middle of the night on New Years Day 2010 he asked her was she “getting laid”. When she said replied yes, he texted “nice cock?”.
In February 2011 he asked the girl to “be my whore”. In other texts he wrote “you’re going to get some cock tonight” and “love to see my gal with meat in her mouth”.
Shane Costello SC, prosecuting, told the court that the victim was present in court but did not wish to give evidence and did not wish to see the contents of a “very personal” letter of apology written by Humphries to her.
Victim impact statement
In her victim impact statement she said that she felt ashamed that she had allowed a man three times her age to manipulate her.
Her statement was delivered under three headings: ‘Guilt’, ‘shame’ and ‘life changes’.
She said Humphries actions have resulted in the loss of her childhood and of her trust in men.
She said she suffers from flashbacks and panic attacks and is in a constant battle with depression.
Finally, she thanked the family of Humphries for reporting him to gardaí, saying: “I will be forever grateful to them”.
Hugh Harnett SC, defending, handed in a number of testimonials to court, including statements from the chief sports writer of The Sunday Times and a well-known sportsman about Humphries’ journalism career and involvement with GAA.
The sportsman wrote of Humphries’ previous good character and his activity as a volunteer in the GAA and expressed shock and disappointment at his offending.
The Sunday Times writer said Humphries was once a “hugely regarded and respected national figure”.
Real suicide risk
Harnett said that as a result of his offending his client has lost his job, his career and his reputation as a result of his behaviour.
He said that Humphries fell into a morbid depression in 2008.
Medical reports stated that Humphries continued to present a very real suicide risk and that he didn’t want psychiatric treatment because he felt that “he deserved to feel psychological pain”.
The report from Dr Paul O’Connell said that Humphries was genuinely remorseful and genuinely suicidal.
Hartnett said that the report also stated that it was possible that underlying neuro-cognitive deficiencies could have impaired his client’s judgement during the period of his offending.
Judge Karen O’Connor said she needed time to consider all the evidence in the case and adjourned sentencing to 24 October.
Hartnett told the court that his client had requested to be remanded in custody and to receive medical treatment in custody.
The former Irish Times journalist was due to stand trial in relation to three further charges involving a separate girl, but these charges were dropped by the prosecution in June.
Sentencing will be decided on Tuesday 24 October.
- Additional reporting by Rónán Duffy
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Thanks for the kind comments. The “deals” business has become very… murky lately. We didnt want to get into that sort of business but its very hard to compete with underhand practices so we chose to wind up that part of the business the same way we have operated, cleanly and with no one getting hurt. As a director, I’m proud of the executive team and what they accomplished, its just time for us to bow out of the business before the whole industry gets… messy.
All the affected staff are being snapped up by other companies in the Distilled group and needless to say we wish them the very best.
?? That’s a strange comment! I know the owner of a deals website that is doing very well and he is totally above board, I’ve also been on the opposite end of offering deals through a website. The fact that some websites insisted on 50%, non negotiable, made the deal impossible offer, hence the lack of variety in some of the sites. It’s not so much a murky industry but one that needs to realise getting rich quick these days in this country isn’t going to happen. As they say look after the customer and the money will look after itself, such a shane another business is gone!
I strongly disagree with the shady comment.
It’s well known that BD were operating on commission percentages between 15 & 25%
If you have a deal selling for €40 & you sell 100 of them, with a 20% commission your take is less than €800 for the day.
BD tried (badly) to monitize an existing subscriber base & as pointed out above, ended up burning some goodwill.
It was a badly executed exercise. Having said that at least they had the balls to pull out before it dragged down the entire DM group
Shady comment? Oh please! The deals business is a great business and I hope it stays. I know for a fact that there is a lot of price fixing amongst certain businesses so the more competition the better. The fact is when the recession hit people were looking for great deals, rightly so and the deals business blossomed. They hit companies with rediculas percentages that were unsustainable. Prices in general came down and now there is better value in general therefore deals companies needed to move along with that trend. Some didn’t, that’s their downfall. Unfortunately just like during the boom, businesses didn’t realise it wouldn’t last and like the initial downfall some companies took advantage of that, not realising that that first initial drop wouldn’t last either and burnt bridges. It’s unfortunates but the deals business is still going strong, thank god for the consumer, as for some businesses? Lesson learnt!
Sad to hear as It was a great site and if you ever had a problem they were second to none in sorting it out. The deals market has been severely diluted by the sheer amount of sites operating tot the detriment of both the customer and the business involved.
Have to agree, the other frustrating thing about deals websites is the vast vast majority of deals appear to be just beauty treatments and nights in hotels, these get old very fast and the beauty items are generally just aimed at women.
Awful shame men appear to be ignored so much
The other thing that I’ve found is that they’re quite deceitful. The deal could be €60 for one night B&B in a 3 star in Lahinch with a glass of vino but when you log on to Roomex or hotels.com, you can get the same deal except in a 4 star & for another €20 throw in a dinner.
They’d one recently for dinner for two people that was worth €90 but yours just €40 (roughly). Anyways, I went on the restaurants site & their price list was up- unless you were planning on ordering two fillet steaks, there’s no way it would come anywhere close to their alleged RRP. Cowboys Ted.
Is that the IT guy on the far left?
Stereotype much?:) That’s Dav. Boards community manager. @Shiminay
hahah, I used to work as a Sys Admin and a Software Engineer, my nerd heritage will always be with me :p
I’m not sure it’s the quality of the deals that are killing these enterprises. I think people have awoken to the fact that they’re not actually saving any money (unless they get a deal on something they were planning to buy, or really need).
If you weren’t going to spend it in the first place, then that’s not saving money.
Any enterprise that bases it’s model on impulse buying will generally have a short shelf life, as the consumer soon cottons onto it.
Pity, they were by far the best run of those splurge of sites.
Great way to bow out, call time on the industry and a shot across competitors. Nothing to do of course with a woeful brand name and gradually deteriorating selection of offers. Stay classy!
Agreed mark. Classy indeed……. Let’s remember guys that just because boards deals doesn’t like the daily deals space doesn’t mean it is doomed. Far from it I would say. It will evolve and change and definitely deal quality will be a must. As a consumer I love deals. U just gotta sift through them. I read somewhere that the market is something like 8 million each month in Dublin alone :-O And let’s not forget the jobs that this sector is creating both within itself and in associated businesses.
In fairness, it’s not as if boards deals didn’t have its small share of badly handled deals either. They also managed to squander almost all of their boards.ie good will at various points.
It is a shame though, as conceived boards deals had fantastic potential to become a community oriented deals site that offered customers more than just €40 Off a hair colouring or spa treatment.
Forgot to add, serious props to DMG for absorbing the losses within the wider group. Nice to see, especially these days.
They’re right about the shelf life of this type of web site. Best of luck to all involved in the site. A great bunch of folks!
I agree-han ^
Crowded marketplace… No room for a ‘me too’ service. The 1/4 of those websites that survive will be the ones who establish a record of quality offerings now.
Hence the banner ads on Boards.ie?
A lot of companies are using Facebook. I presume it costs them nothing. I see a couple of hotels with deals on it lately and you can see how many people took up the offer.
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