A MARRIED MAN who sent sexually explicit text messages to a schoolgirl has been sentenced to seven years in jail at Galway Circuit Criminal Court.

A jury convicted Ray McHugh, 39, from Ballaghbawn, Belclare, Tuam last December of the oral rape, sexual exploitation and sexual assault of the schoolgirl four years ago when she was 13-years-old.

McHugh was placed on the sex offender’s register and spent Christmas in prison awaiting sentence.

The father-of-one was brought before Galway Circuit Criminal Court this morning, where he received an eight-and-a-half year prison term with the final 18 months suspended.

The now 17-year-old girl was present in court with her mother for the sentence hearing.

They declined to comment afterwards.

McHugh hung his head and started to cry when sentence was imposed.

He had denied twenty sample charges involving the oral rape, sexual assault and sexual exploitation of the girl on dates between 1 May, 2014 and 27 February, 2015, during a two-week trial in December.

He had deleted explicit sexual texts he had sent to the child and instructed her to delete them once she’d read them.

Gardaí had no difficulty retrieving the texts from McHugh’s phone and from the girl’s phone using digital forensics software.

Passing sentence, Judge Rory McCabe said there had been an element of grooming involved and that for a period of seven to eight months, McHugh, had every opportunity to stop but didn’t.

‘He didn’t care’

In her victim impact statement to the court, the girl said she was scared when her mother read the texts on her phone because McHugh had warned and threatened her not to tell anyone.

“Until someone else knew about it and I said it out loud, I didn’t know how wrong it was.

“I hate the way people talk about sexual assault as if they know what they’re talking about. They makes jokes about it. They don’t understand.

“He took so many pieces of me and he didn’t care.

“All through the trial, I was sick at the thought of being cross-examined. It brought it all back.

“After he was convicted, I thought all the anger and sadness would be gone but that didn’t happen,” the girl said in her statement.

She said she had stopped trusting all men and would only go to a female nurse or doctor now.

The only person she trusted then was her mother and she stopped going out and missed out on things other teenagers did like going to discos and concerts.

Respectable family

The sentence hearing heard today that McHugh came from a very respectable family and they, his wife and baby son, were victims too of McHugh’s crimes.

Judge McCabe said the headline sentence for defilement in this case was 12 years before mitigating factors were taken into account.

The headline sentence for the sexual exploitation was also 12 years, he said, with eight years for the sexual assaults.

He said the only mitigating factor he could find was evidence of McHugh’s previous good character and for that reason he said he was entitled to a 20 percent remission.

He sentenced McHugh to eight-and-a-half years on each of the four counts of defilement – which related to the oral rape charges.

He sentenced him to a further eight-and-a-half years for each of the seven counts of child exploitation – relating to the text messages.

He imposed a six-year sentence for four counts of sexual assault.

All of the sentences are to be served concurrently.

Judge McCabe said that to act as a mixed incentive and deterrent, he was suspending the final 18 months of the sentence for five years.

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