The Irish Times reports:

“An RTE producer has pleaded guilty to sex offences after he travelled to England to meet what he thought was a 13-year-old girl.

Kieran Creaven (55) from Dublin pleaded guilty to a charge of attempting to meet a girl under the age of 16 years of age following grooming.

Creaven also pleaded guilty to a second charge of attempting to cause or incite a girl aged between 13 and 15 to engage in non penetrative sexual activity.

The two charges relate to a period of time between July 1st and November 18th 2017, when Creaven travelled to Leeds with the intention of committing the crimes in a city centre hotel.”

RTÉ producer Kieran Creaven pleads guilty to sex offences in Leeds (The Irish Times)

Previously: To Catch A Predator

Pic/video via Robin Schiller

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44 thoughts on “Guilty”

  1. Not feeling so Nice Anne

    Lock him up and leave him there. Fupping sick of these scumbags getting away with their crimes. Maybe the UK might be able to give him a decent sentence, something we in Ireland are incapable of doing.

    2. Killian G

      Really depends on whether you see this as being about sex or about criminal / sinister behaviour. I would see it as the latter. If you see it as the former, you might be a tad touched in that department and should perhaps seek immediate professional intervention.

      1. Increasing_Displacement

        This has nothing to do with anything else in the vid bar the iPhone guy.
        He could be taking pictures of a celebrity, a dog. Doesn’t matter.

  4. Andrew

    Does anyone know what’s the likely sentence for this kind of thing?
    I feel sorry for any victims of his we don’t know about and indeed for his wife and family .
    I understand the Gardai are investigating as well.

    1. Joe Small

      I read some commentary at the time of his arrest that suggested that with admissibility issues around the vigilante group’s activities, the fact that there wasn’t an actual victim (that we know of) and that its, seemingly, his first offence to which he’s pleading guilty means a custodial sentence is unlikely. He will though sure lose his job and his personal life is in tatters with a possible ongoing Garda investigation so its not like he’s walking away scot free.

  7. Capitan Alatriste

    I watched a doc on youtube over the weekend which followed a met police operation doing the same thing. to catch a paedophile. good doc.

  8. Ben Redmond

    On the internet, he attempted to meet a girl aged between 13 and 15 for illegal sex with a minor. However, if this girl was a facebook fabrication set up by a group of Leeds citizens to trap would-be male paedophiles, can British law say that he is guilty? He groomed, from Dublin, a nonexistent child victim in Leeds. Can somebody with knowledge of the British legal system please explain what the law says about virtual reality victims?

    2. The Old Boy

      They are charged with an inchoate offence, for example, attempting to cause or incite a child to engage in sexual activity. It doesn’t matter that in these discrete incidents at least, it is a “victimless crime”.

      The offence as charged was complete when the accused attempted to do something which is a crime. It does not matter that, in the circumstances, he could not actually commit the full offence for reasons of impossibility.

        1. The Old Boy

          If you like, yes. Many “attempted x” and “conspiracy to y” offences (especially the latter) could be categorised thus.

          1. Go A Way

            I suppose. But standards of proof must be difficult to meet in those cases. In this case I know the video was not helpful to the accused but it was obtained by entrapment – it seemed he had some kind or arguable case. I guess he was advised to try to mitigate the sentence by pleading guilty?

          2. The Old Boy

            Proof is often difficult in such cases, although obviously not where the accused has sent someone patently sexual messages and images. English law specifically criminalises the grooming of children for a sexual purpose.

            There is no defence of entrapment in English law. In any case, I do not believe this would fall under even an American-style definition of entrapment.

            Finally, while he would have been informed of the benefits of an early guilty plea by his solicitor or barrister (as they are now obliged to do so by law,) it would be grossly negligent, incompetent and unethical to advise someone to plead guilty to an offence if they had a legally arguable defence.

  9. Ben Redmond

    Just asking for myself. I am curious to know what British law has to say about the grooming of a virtual reality child victim.

      1. Ben Redmond

        @The Old Boy You say, factually, that ” English law specifically criminalises the grooming of children for a sexual purpose.” I am curious to know what English law says about the grooming for a sexual purpose of a virtual reality child created online by an anti-paedophile group. Is it an offence to groom a child that does not exist?

        1. The Old Boy

          It doesn’t say anything specifically, but it doesn’t need to. As I explained above, it is the attempt that counts.

          A number of these cases have been successfully prosecuted in England on this basis.

          Defence arguments tend to run along the line that admitting the evidence of so-called paedophile hunters “diminished the integrity of the court process”. The point you make, about no actual children being involved, is little argued as it is quite irrelevant to the attempt offence in the circumstances.

          1. The Old Boy

            I should add that the High Court held in April that prosecutions brought based on these “paedophile hunter” operations are legally sound, provided always that the evidence they give is more probative with regard to the offence charged than prejudicial to the ordinary rights of an accused in criminal law.

            These groups do seem to have swotted up on the rules of criminal evidence.

          2. Warden of the Snort

            Thanks for your comments here the Old Boy, it seems like you really know what you’re talking about. I was just going to ask you if you had cites to precedent cases ;)

  10. Gay Tea Shop

    Shame. I thought the intro was going to read “An RTE producer has pleaded guilty to Fair City.”

    Damn pedalos coming over here… etc.

  11. italia'90

    Really?! Nobody EVER was born evil.
    I beg to differ.
    Jon Venables and Robert Thompson
    Ian Brady and Myra Hindley
    Charles Manson
    Ian Huntley
    Andrei Chikatilo
    Darya Saltykova
    Mikhail Popkov
    *Michael Noonan
    …to name but a few.

    *Obviously NOT born evil. It was just a phase he was going through. Bless.

    1. Sam

      You don’t reckon the regular beatings that Robert Thompson got and being locked in the rabbit cage might have affected his mental and emotional development?
      I don’t think you can conclude that he was abnormal simply by accident of birth rather than because he was raised in a chaotic household where the kids turned on each other either due to encouragement of beating by their mother, or her absence while she was getting blotto down the boozer.
      Mikhail Popkov likewise was abused by an alcoholic parent. Ian Brady never knew his Dad and was fostered out. Myra Hindley’s dad was given to bouts of violence (supposedly linked to PTSD from his time as a Para.)
      Damaged goods, certainly, but not born monsters. Probably would have been model citizens if born into a different household, but they still had their choices and choose to become monsters like Leopold and Loeb.

    2. italia'90

      All good points well made.
      The main debate over the years which addresses this issue (to my limited knowledge, granted) is the Nature versus Nurture argument.
      However, I am also of the opinion that we are all born with the ability to perpetrate great acts of evil and of good in equal measure. I might be contradicting myself, I know, but experience tells me that some people are just more inclined to former rather than the later.
      Rubik was an evil genius Moyest, I’ll give you that much.

  12. :-Joe

    I enjoy reading these posts about paedophiles being accused, caught and convicted etc because it’s a snapshot of public opinion that generally goes along the lines of “BURN THEM TO HELL” and “EVIL” this and that and about ten percent of comments are rational and sometimes very informative. Hat tip to @The Old Boy and @Wasted Here and others interested in knowing more.

    To echo @Wasted Here’s comments, if a fire was burning around your house would you risk waiting for it to consume your fellow humans, partner, family, pets and belongings on the basis that later you can condem the arsonist if caught for lighting the fire?

    No, you wouldn’t think twice in most cases(there’s always one) yet there isn’t even a respectable emergency child line service or even the notion of a mental health and support system available to offer non-offending hebophiles and paeodophiles or others with sexual dysfunctions considered either immoral or illegal. Funny that, eh. you’re all just standing in a pile of burnt embers that could be your future lives and cheering at tiny sparks being put out.

    I’ll do my usual recommendation that you should watch the documentary “Are all men paedophiles?” from 2013 because not so strangely enough unfortunately, it’s one of the most informitave and rarest mainstream documentaries made about a subject that affects peoples lives so greatly. Very few have time to even understand the subject let alone be taught or learn to deal with it properly in the same way we see all the problems of dealing with mental health. Although personally I don’t believe it is in fact a mental health problem in itself that can be cured but more of a genetic predisposition that can be controlled, treated and managed as opposed to sexual assault and abuse relating to sociopothy, psychopothy and people with limited brain function etc. As far as I know it is officially considered a psychiatric disorder.

    If you go looking for it, find the original unedited version because apparently the Netflix version is heavily edited due to criticisms for “not having a political agenda” which if true, is a completely daft reason. I’ve seen the original one and as part of general sexual education, if every child in Ireland watched it they would be ten times better off as I was fumbling around in the dark for over a decade. Also..Netflix is not the best place to watch a movie folks.

    Also, on the BBC Dr. Michael Mosley has a good documentary on Psychopathy, the science known about it’s origins and some of the many circumstances involved in causing it which are not always the only root cause of any immoral or illegal sexual desires.

    He also did a very good documentary on the science known of how to lose weight properly through intermittent fasting as opposed to all the daft fad diets and the endless mythical nonsensical ideas of calorie counting that do not hold up to the scrutiny of basic science and imperical evidence…. y’know, if anyone is interested?… Burp.

    :-J

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