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Soccer sex fiend released

Tuesday, 02 March 2010

A BALLYMUN mother whose two sons were sexually abused by a paedophile has expressed her fury after his release from prison. Miriam Christian and her sons Derek and Greg, of Shangan Green, were shocked, disgusted and horrified to hear that serial sex abuser Des Foley was released from Arbour Hill last Monday, seven months after he received his jail sentence for sexually assaulting four boys aged between eight and 14-years-of-age between 1989 and 1996. The evil soccer coach, who lured and locked his victims into his flat, was given a four-year sentence with the last 12 months suspended last July. But because the perverted child molester had been in custody since 2007 and received an additional 25 per cent remission, he’s now walking the streets as a free man. “It’s an absolute disgrace that this disgusting, filthy, b****** is now a free man,” she told Northside People. “Where’s the justice? We thought he’d be behind bars for many more years. He’s the lowest of the low of all criminals. It turns my stomach to think of what he did to my sons and to  other children. “Why should he be able to enjoy the rest of his life carefree given the hurt and damage he’s caused to so many young people?” Miriam feels that she and Foley’s other victims deserve to know where he’s living now and called for him to be publically identified so that people can recognise the paedophile. “I want posters of his face put up all over the place so that people know who and what he is,” she said. “I’ll tell you this much, my sons are two very angry young men. Greg doesn’t know if he’s coming or going. I have to look after them in case they do anything to themselves.” Last July, Northside People spoke to Miriam’s son Derek (29) who once attempted to commit suicide as a result of the mental torment he suffered from the abuse that started when he was just eight years of age. “The abuse that I and I’m sure the other boys suffered was the worst of the worst and he got off with just four years,” he told Northside People. “He should have got at least 10 years but instead it’s me who’s got the life sentence of guilt, disturbing memories and torment. “I always thought I was the only one who was abused until I went to the gardai to report him. “Then all these other guys started to approach me with their stories of what he did to them. “I have to live with the guilt of knowing that if I’d reported it sooner I could have saved some people from his abuse.” A year after Derek reported Foley, his brother Greg (22) came forward to tell of his own abuse at the hands of the same man who had had lived in one of the Ballymun towers during the late ‘80s and ‘90s. “I went nuts when I found out,” Derek said. “I kept thinking: ‘I could have stopped all this’.” Derek recalled how the abuse first started and continued until he was 13 years old. “He [Foley] knew I was interested in soccer and watching the team play so after one training session he asked if I wanted to go back to flat to wash the gear and it started that day,” Derek explained. “He was like the pillar of the community; everyone trusted him, so he’d tell my mother that I was going away on a camping trip with himself and a few other boys but instead he’d lock me in his flat for days on end. “He threatened me that if I ever said anything that he’d cut my mother up and burn her. He’d even make sure I got the message by arriving up at our door on an evening and sure my mother would invite him in for tea. He just wanted to let you know how easy it was for him to gain access to our house. “It was pure intimidation and manipulation and I was terrified of him, especially since he lived so close.”