{"id":325553,"date":"2026-03-02T21:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T21:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/325553\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T21:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T21:39:12","slug":"man-targeted-by-vigilantes-had-sexualised-conversations-with-what-he-believed-were-underage-girls-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/325553\/","title":{"rendered":"Man targeted by vigilantes had \u2018sexualised conversations\u2019 with what he believed were underage girls \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A vigilante group targeting potential online child exploitation brought a convicted sex offender to a Garda<\/a> station after a sting operation on Facebook<\/a>, a court has heard.<\/p>\n

Michael Macken (41) was in August 2024 caught having highly sexualised conversations with who he believed were nine different teenage girls.<\/p>\n

Macken, with a former address in Stoneybatter, Dublin<\/a>, was charged with nine counts of communicating with a person with the intention to facilitate sexual exploitation of a child. He pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court<\/a> to a number of sample counts. <\/p>\n

He was also charged with six counts of attempting to send sexually explicit material to a child and pleaded guilty to a single sample count. <\/p>\n

Det Garda Keith Alford told prosecuting barrister Aideen Collard that on a date in August 2024 about 20 people from a \u201cself-appointed\u201d vigilante group came to Macken\u2019s parents\u2019 home in Coolock, where he was then living.<\/p>\n

The Northern Ireland<\/a> based group, calling themselves Child Online Protection Enforcers NI, confronted Macken with evidence that he had been trying to contact children online for the purpose of sexual exploitation. <\/p>\n

Defence counsel Seoirse \u00d3 D\u00fanlaing put it to Alford that some of the group were wearing hi-visibility vests and that at one stage his client, who has an extremely low intellectual functioning, believed they were garda\u00ed. <\/p>\n

Counsel said some of the group \u201cbundled\u201d Macken into a car and drove him to the Garda station where \u201cthere was uproar\u201d. The court heard an incident outside the station led to two people from the group being charged with public order offences.<\/p>\n

Garda\u00ed took Macken into custody for his own protection. He then admitted he had been using Facebook to contact children who he believed were 14 and younger. He said he did it because he was bored. <\/p>\n

In text conversations read out in court, Macken asked some of the girls if they would get into bed with him. He asked one girl to undress and touch her breasts and asked another to send him pictures of her in bed in her nightdress.<\/p>\n

He asked one girl, who told him she was 12, for a photo of her in bed and asked if her breasts would fit in his hand. He asked another girl for photograph of her in her school uniform.<\/p>\n

On WhatsApp, he sent one girl links to adult pornography and asked if she would do what she saw on the website. The detective said the profile image on the WhatsApp account was \u201cobviously a young girl\u201d.<\/p>\n

Macken has two previous convictions for sexual assault, including the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl at an amusement arcade in Trabolgan, Co Cork, in 2006.<\/p>\n

Defence counsel told the court his client did not apply for bail after his arrest for charge on February 21st last year. <\/p>\n

Judge Orla Crowe adjourned sentencing until May 14th, when she will hear a full plea of mitigation from defence counsel. She remanded Macken into continuing custody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A vigilante group targeting potential online child exploitation brought a convicted sex offender to a Garda station after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45,13553,615,823,61,60,43,2443],"class_list":["post-325553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-circuit-court","tag-dublin","tag-facebook","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-northern-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}