A young man posed as a teenage girl on Facebook in order to get a 13 year old boy to strip and expose himself over a web cam, a court has heard.

The 22-year-old, who cannot be named by order of the court, made a random contact with the victim on the social networking website and told the boy that he was a 14-year-old girl.

Judge Mary Ellen Ring has ordered that the offender, who has no previous or ongoing connection to the victim, cannot be identified. She has previously said that the issue of publishing his identity will be dealt with on a future date when she finalises his sentence on this and other similar offences.

She also ordered that the fake girl’s name used on the Facebook page as well as the man’s full address at the time cannot be published. The man is no longer resident at that address.

Detective Garda David Nolan said that when gardaí went to his then home they seized a laptop on which they later discovered 39 images and videos depicting sexual exploitation of children.

The man pleaded guilty to one count of possession of child pornography and to twelve counts of sexually exploiting a child at his home in Dublin on dates between March 18 and October 12, 2012.

Det Gda Nolan told Fiona Murphy BL, prosecuting, that when asked by gardaí why he downloaded the child pornography images he said: “I was just experimenting...with my sexuality”.

The computer images and movies had filenames like “11-year showing his nice cock”, “preteen paedo boys”. They depicted male and female children under 16 exposing in states of undress and engaging in sexually explicit acts.

The court heard that while posing as the teenage girl the man told a boy on Facebook he was attractive and encouraged him to turn on his “web cam”. He then persuaded the boy to expose himself in various ways.

The man would tell the boy that he was making the girl horny. He convinced the child to strip while on camera and to expose his penis.

This offending came to light as a result of investigations into other acts of child exploitation over Facebook by the man. Gardaí then contacted the mother of the boy.

Judge Ring remanded the man in continuing custody for sentence next Wednesday.