Children’s Panel member posed as girl on Facebook to groom young boys

A member of the Children’s Panel posed as a teenage girl to groom teenage boys on social networking sites.

Brian McMenemy pretended to be a 17-year-old girl called Jade before befriending the boys on Facebook and Bebo and asked them to perform sex acts in front of their webcams.

The 47-year-old was employed as the deputy manager of the Stopover project, run by the charity Quarriers, which provided support for vulnerable people between 16 and 24, at the time of the offences.

He was caught when the mother of one of his young victims came across a chat log from MSN instant messenger and became suspicious.

McMenemy, of Kyleakin Road, in Glasgow’s Arden, pled guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court on Tuesday to using lewd, indecent and libidinous practises towards a 13-year-old boy between July 2008 and July 2009.

He also admitted pretending to be Jade and inducing two other 14-year-old boys to carry out sex acts transmitted via a webcam and engage in sexually explicit conversations with them between January 2011 and February 2012. He pled guilty to fraudulently talking to another man, by pretending to be the teenage girl.

The court heard that in May 2011 McMenemy created a Facebook page in the name of a 17-year-old blonde girl called Jade and added a young 14-year-old boy as a friend. After a week or so they swapped email addresses and began chatting via MSN instant messaging.

Procurator fiscal depute Aline Devaney told the court: “During the initial conversations on MSN the accused told the complainer he was 17 with the complainer informing the accused he was 14 and the complainer formed the opinion the accused didn’t seem bothered by his age.”

Mrs Devaney said they would talk for around ten minutes each time they were online and the conversation soon turned to talking about sex with McMemeny always initiating this. She told the court that on one occasion McMenemy asked the complainer to carry out a sex act on his webcam and he did, believing he was doing it for a 17-year-old girl.

In June 2011 McMenemy asked the boy to expose himself again on the camera but he refused. The teenager’s mother later discovered the chat log between her son and ‘Jade’ and contacted the police because she was suspicious.

The email address linked with Facebook and MSN was traced to McMenemy’s computer at his home. This led police to his three other victims – one he befriended on Bebo and two on Facebook.

On Tuesday, McMenemy was jailed for a year and seven months for the offence. Sentencing, Sheriff Martin Jones QC told him a custodial sentence was “appropriate”.