A MOTHER checks her son's mobile phone. No parent likes snooping on their child or breaching their privacy, but sometimes needs must.Mum discovers inappropriate messages; the messages lead to the discovery, not of underage drinking or sexual experimentation with his peers, but a child sex ring involving up to 10 men.
And her 14-year-old son is at its centre.
The boy at the centre of the investigation is still attending school. Once he was identified as vulnerable to paedophiles, his name and number were passed on and the other men sought him out.
Lured to be raped by sexual predators, pillars of society no less, the child later tells gardai that the vile acts were consensual.
Barring murder, the sexual violation of a child is a parent's worst nightmare.
That the teenager suffered abuse at the hands of a trainee garda and a school teacher - people who hold positions of authority and respect in our society - only adds to the horror.
According to CARI, the child sexual abuse charity, paedophile rings are becoming more organised and their membership actively seek out organisations and activities that allow them access to children.
Abusers have also embraced the digital age, using the internet to share images, ideas and locations where they can get access to children and children deemed vulnerable; vulnerable minors, such as the one in five children in Ireland affected by sexual abuse, many at the hands of multiple perpetrators.
That is a terrifying statistic and yet only 5pc of child sex abuse cases in Ireland ever get prosecuted.
Now, more than ever, the revelations of a paedophile ring unmasked by a mother's vigilance, underscores the need to press ahead with a referendum to introduce adequate child protection measures.
Since the collapse of Ireland's statutory rape regime in the wake of last year's decision by the Supreme Court in the CC case, Irish children have no effective legal bulwark against abuse. Did they ever?
Even if the Government encounters opposition, not entirely unfounded, regarding the impact of extending children's rights, it must move to safeguard them against sexual predators.
Despite our high levels of child sex abuse, grooming - as distinct from procurement (rarely prosecuted) - is not an offence. If a child perpetrates a sexual act at the request of its abuser - in legal terms, a passive assault - the adult who groomed that child to do so has not committed a crime.
Following the Soham murders five years ago of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, who were killed by school janitor Ian Huntley, Britain undertook a root and branch review of its child protection regime.
That review, after widespread public consultation, led to the introduction of the 2003 Sexual Offences Act, one of the most comprehensive legal packages to protect children and other vulnerable people from abuse.
The Act closed off a loophole that allowed those accused of child rape to escape proper punishment by arguing that they consented.
It deems any sexual intercourse with a child under 13 as a rape and it is a crime to cause or incite a child to engage in sexual activity.
In Britain, it is now a crime to meet a child following sexual grooming.
It is a crime to befriend a child on the internet or by other means and meet or intend to meet a child with the intention of abusing them.
The maximum sentence is 10 years' imprisonment.
The Government here is also considering new offences of grooming of children, including a maximum life sentence for people in authority who abuse children under the age of 18.
But it needs to win a divisive referendum first and until it does, countless numbers of children will continue to suffer abuse.
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