A SEPARATED MAN who had sexual encounters with three underage girls one year after he was caught with child pornography has been jailed for seven and a half years.

David Masterson (54) who is originally from the Tallaght area of Dublin but has been on remand in custody since September 2017, met the three girls through a teenage boy who had linked in with the victims on social media.

Detective Garda Colin McKiernan agreed with Paul Carroll SC, defending, that this teenage boy had gone online “looking for sexual experiences for payment and roped these girls into this situation”.

One of these girls, who was 16 at the time, started a relationship with Masterson in February 2016 and continued seeing him until December of that year. The detective confirmed that there were multiple sexual encounters between Masterson and this girl during that time.

Masterson pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to three charges of defilement on dates between February 2016 and December 2016 and charges of possession and distribution of child pornography on 14 November 2015. He has one previous conviction for a road traffic offence.

Sentencing him today, Judge Martin Nolan said that to say Masterson’s behaviour was wrong was an “understatement”.

“He had sex with two individuals under 17 on one occasion and he had multiple sexual encounters with a girl he lived with,” the judge said.

The judge refused to suspend any portion of the sentence, saying: “The misbehaviour has been gross in this case”. He backdated the sentence to when Masterson went into custody.

Investigation

McKiernan told Garrett McCormack BL, prosecuting, that gardaí were called to “an incident” during a New Year’s Eve party in December 2016, which Masterson and some of the victims were attending, and an investigation was launched.

He said the girls later gave statements and confirmed that Masterson had sex with one of them while she was 16 years old and had engaged in oral sex with another girl when she was 15 years old.

The other girl confirmed that she and Masterson were in an ongoing sexual relationship before she turned 17. There were no victim impact reports before the court.

McKiernan confirmed that Masterson’s rented home was searched in November 2015 following confidential information and a laptop was seized.

The court heard that 5,121 images were discovered on the laptop, 3,846 of which showed adult men sexually abusing pre-teen boys and girls.

The images included a baby girl being assaulted, another girl being urinated on and a third girl with her limbs bound in chains and a plastic bag around her head.

McKiernan said 196 videos were also found, 176 of which showed adult men having sex with pre-teen boys and girls, including one during which a child could be heard screaming while she was strapped down and raped.

Masterson also admitted sharing one video that was later sent back to him.

McKiernan agreed with Carroll that previous to the search of his home, Masterson was not on the garda radar and had lived “a fairly normal life” having worked for a semi-state body for 20 years and been married for 26 years.

In relation to the child pornography, Masterson told gardaí that he was lonely following the breakdown of his marriage, the court heard.

McKiernan agreed that “things had started going off the rails” for Masterson.

Counsel said his client was “finished in terms of his family, finished in terms of his friends and finished in terms of his work”.

“He is a man who literally went off the rails at a late stage in his life when he had just turned 50 and continued on that trajectory in terms of his serious offending,” Carroll submitted.