A MAN who worked in a Pembroke Dock newsagents has been accused of having pictures of children as young as four being abused and talking about porn and masturbation with a 10-year-old.
Daniel Byrne-Crowley, 28, has been charged with three offences of making indecent images of children and one of sexual communication with a child.
The offences are said to have taken place between August 2012 and September 2020, while he was alleged to have been inappropriately talking with the child between June 2019 and September 2020.
The defendant, now of Swily Road in Dublin, denies each of the charges.
Opening the case, prosecutor Helen Randall told the jury that police raided Byrne-Crowley’s home address on Bush Street in Pembroke Dock on October 28, 2020. They seized two phones, a MacBook computer, and an iPad, on which they found 23 child abuse images on his devices – one of which was inaccessible.
The jury was told that the images included two naked boys between the ages of 10 and 12 with one carrying out oral sex on the other, a boy aged between four and six being abused by an adult masturbating him, and a video of three naked boys – aged 10 and 14 – with one masturbating while looking at the camera.
Ms Randall said that officers also discovered what appeared to be conversations between the complainant and other adult men discussing indecent images, masturbation, and oral sex.
“He tells one user he had previously worked in a children’s summer camp in America and how he saw them naked and taught them to masturbate,” she said.
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The police also recovered conversations on the devices with a 10-year-old boy.
Ms Randall said the conversations involved pornography, masturbation, giving the boy a computer, and going to Oakwood theme park.
When asked about the indecent images in interview, Byrne-Crowley “claimed he didn’t know how they got on the devices,” Ms Randall said.
He also admitted he had been in conversation with the child, but that he “didn’t see anything wrong” with it.
Ms Randall said it was the prosecution’s case that Byrne-Crowley had sought out the child sex abuse images.
“The prosecution say it could only be him and it is obvious from his conversations with others that it was him,” she said.
The trial continues.
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