Kieran Creaven: Former RTÉ producer jailed for child sex abuse

Kieran Creaven pleaded guilty to 10 child sex abuse offences in May

A former RTÉ sports producer has been jailed for 10 years for child sexual abuse offences after footage of his crimes was recovered by investigators.

Kieran Creaven filmed himself abusing a young girl in the Philippines in 2014.

The footage was discovered on a memory card taken from Creaven in England in 2017 after he had been confronted by so-called paedophile hunters in Leeds.

Creaven, from Adelaide Street in Dún Laoghaire, admitted 10 offences at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in May.

It is the second time the 59-year-old has been jailed for child sex offences.

In 2018 he was given an 18-month sentence at Leeds Crown Court after he admitted attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity.

Creaven had flown to Leeds from Ireland in November 2017 after arranging to meet someone he believed was a 13-year-old girl at a hotel.

However, that girl did not exist - he had actually been communicating with paedophile hunters.

He was arrested by West Yorkshire Police in the city and served nine months in prison.

Kieran Creaven was arrested in City Square in Leeds in 2017 after being confronted by "paedophile hunters"

After a meeting between police forces in the UK and Ireland, the investigation was then taken over by the Garda Síochána's (Irish police force) National Protective Services Bureau.

Creaven was arrested in Ireland in October 2020 and questioned about the footage recorded in the Philippines, according to RTE News.

The material found on the memory card consisted of two videos of Creaven abusing the same young girl.

At one stage there were other children, including a baby, in the room.

In another video, Creaven was recorded giving instructions to another adult to abuse two children.

'Deeply ashamed'

The court also heard that Creaven used different Facebook accounts to groom underage teenagers in Ireland.

He was caught in possession of obscene images of children aged seven and 12 as well as mobile phone video of a man abusing a two-year-old girl.

During the case, Creaven wrote a letter of apology saying he was deeply ashamed of his "abhorrent behaviour".

He also described his arrest in Leeds in November 2017 as a good thing because it had brought him back from a dark spiral he was going down into.

Creaven was sacked by Irish national broadcaster RTÉ in 2017 with immediate effect after he pleaded guilty to the charge against him in Leeds.

RTÉ said it had cooperated with the subsequent Garda investigation.