Fake model agent sexually exploited children

Michael Dynes, orginally from Dungannon, but now ‘living in a hostel in Ballymena’, was put on the Sex Offenders’ register for life and subjected to a Sex Offences Prevention Order enabling his monitoring for the next ten years.

Dungannon Crown Court had heard that 39-year-old Dynes set himself up as a fake model agent tricking both children and adults to pose for him, and sometimes into preforming sex acts.

The court was also told that Dynes had targeted young people through ads he’d placed on the Gumtree website ‘seeking life models’.

Judge Neil Rafferty QC sentenced Dynes, who has already served the equivilant of a 28-month sentence, to a total of three years and one month with 13 months to be served in jail with the rest on supervised licensed parole.

The judge said instead of returning him back to jail for a ‘month or two’, the public and children would best be protected if he increased his period of “statutory supervision”, allowing him to complete “a tailored” probation run sex offenders’ habilitation course.

Judge Rafferty told Dynes that he had been a married man, in employment, with a home, but “now all of that is gone solely due to your own criminal behaviour,” and because of his criminality, he had “ruined” his life, and that again was “entirely your own fault”.

Dynes’ period of offending, between 2007, and 2015, involved a total of 41 charges and ranged from downloading images of child sex abuse, through to voyeurism, to inciting children, some as young as 13, to perform acts, to fraudulent behaviour, involving four female adult victims.

Judge Rafferty said: “No one should be in any doubt that this market (for child abuse images) would not exist but for people like you - no one can distance themselves from the fact it is a real live child being abused.”

However, the judge also told Dynes that he had received a positive detailed probation report showing his shame and acceptance of his guilt and remorse and when released on bail had shown himself to be “open, honest and transparent with probation about your offending”.

Judge Rafferty added he was satisfied the defendant should be given full credit but that his sentence was meant not only to punish him, but also to deter others.

Judge Rafferty warned the Tyrone man that even one single breach of any of the statutory orders surrounding his sentence meant he would be remanded back to prison to serve out the full term.

Dynes was caught following one of the first major investigations in Northern Ireland carried out by the National Crime Agency and the PSNI into child sex exploitation.

Among the images of child sex abuse were over a thouand, over 400 of which prosecution barrister Simon Reid revealed were ‘first generation type images.’

In mitigation, the defence said Dynes had “lost everything – his family, his wife, his job and respect. All have gone”, But at the same time, they acknowledged ‘it is his fault. He cannot get any lower.’