On Friday, Northern Ireland national Alexander McCartney, 26, who abused at least 70 children online and pushed one of them to suicide, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years.
Belfast Crown Court heard the computer science student engaged in deceiving victims on messaging sites including Snapchat and Instagram, making them think they were chatting online with a teenage girl of the same age, from the bedroom of his home. He encouraged them to send indecent images or engage in sexual activity via webcam or mobile phone, which he then shared online with others and used to threaten children. On top of that, he pretended to be the identities of previous girls he attacked and sometimes forced his victims to involve siblings, even three-year-olds, in the abuse.
“For many of them, their childhoods have been stolen. Some have attempted to commit suicide. Others report self-harm and suicidal thoughts. Whatever remorse the defendant now seeks to persuade me of, he was absolutely empty of remorse at the time,” Judge O’Hara said.
One of his victims, 12-year-old Cimarron Thomas from West Virginia, committed suicide in 2018 with her father’s gun during an online conversation with McCartney and was found by her nine-year-old sister, the court heard. Their father took his own life after her death, according to police.
The charges involved 70 victims from countries including the UK, the US, Ireland and Australia in one of the largest investigations into “catfishing” or sexual extortion in the world. Police in Northern Ireland said this was just a small fraction of the estimated 3,500 victims believed to have been assaulted in about 30 countries. Between 2016 and 2019, McCartney had several arrests but continued to commit offences despite bail conditions until he was remanded in custody.
There has not been a case such as the present where the defendant has used social media on an industrial scale to inflict such terrible and catastrophic damage on young girls, up to and including the death of a 12-year-old girl, the judge added.
He received a range of other sentences, from 10 years on each count for 45 counts of committing acts of varying degrees of seriousness resulting in sexual acts on underage girls, to six years on each count for 29 counts of possession of indecent images and 10 years on each count for 58 counts of blackmail.
McCartney pleaded guilty to 185 counts including manslaughter, blackmail, inducing a child to engage in sexual acts and making and distributing indecent images of children. He will be eligible for consideration for release in 2039.
