10/03/2009

Fair City Actor Pleads Guilty To Sex With Teen Boy

A former soap actor has admitted to having sex with a 14-year-old boy and will be sentenced next week.

Ex-Fair City actor, Patrick Dunleavy, 42, pleaded guilty yesterday at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to engaging in a sexual act with the boy in January 2007.

The actor was in court along with another man Thomas Rogers, 45, who pleaded guilty to two charges of engaging in a sexual act with the boy in January and February 2007.

The boys parents found suggestive text messages on the boys phone from both men after he had joined a gay website.

The boys father, posing as the teenager, then arranged a meeting with one of the men, before following him home and reporting his address to Gardaí.

Both Rogers, of St Catherine's Avenue, Rush, Co Dublin and Dunleavy, of Sherrard Street Lower, Dublin, had no previous convictions.

Counsel for Dunleavy told Judge Nolan that this was not a case in which the young boy had been groomed, nor was "there a withdrawal of consent throughout the incidents".

Judge Martin Nolan said that he needed time to consider the case and adjourned sentencing until next Friday.

(DW/BMcC)

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