Alexander McCartney preyed from age 16 on young girls online

Background: Former computer science student sentenced to life in prison with minimum of 20 years is suspected of targeting ‘many, many more’ young victims

The scale and impact of the horrific crimes committed by a Co Armagh man at the centre of one of the world’s largest catfishing investigations may never be known.

Alexander McCartney (26), was sentenced at Belfast Crown Court to life with a minimum of 20 years for 185 offences linked to the online sexual abuse of 70 children living as far away as New Zealand and the United States.

But this is thought to be only the tip of the iceberg in terms of his offending; the former Ulster University computer science student is suspected of targeting “many, many more” young victims “all around the world”, a court heard last week. The PSNI said on Friday there may be as many as 3,500 victims globally.

In a legal first, he will also be imprisoned for the manslaughter of a 12-year-old American girl who took her life after he blackmailed her in 2018.

Catfishing involves using a fake online identity to target other online users, which then leads to sexual abuse, exploitation and blackmail.

Multiple false claims were made by McCartney to his victims; he told them that he was a victim of catfishing himself, had suffered childhood abuse and had been placed in foster care – claims flatly rejected by prosecution lawyers.

He preyed on young girls online from when he was 16 years old.

Operating from the bedroom of his rural family home on the Lissummon Road outside Newry, McCartney posed as a teenage girl on the social media platform Snapchat. Instagram and other messaging sites were also used.

Some of the detail outlined during a two-hour court hearing last Thursday – when he pleaded guilty to all charges spanning a six-year period beginning in 2013 – was too graphic and disturbing to be reported by media.

“We’re into new territory here,” Mr Justice John O’Hara told the court.

Befriending vulnerable children “who were either gay or exploring their sexuality with other girls”, he persuaded them to send sexual images, before revealing himself and blackmailing them to send more explicit material for his own sexual gratification.

His youngest victim was just 10 years old.

Bestiality images – one girl was forced to engage in sexual activity with her pet dog – and demanding victims’ siblings to perform sex acts were among the footage uncovered in the international criminal investigation. McCartney insisted the siblings always had to be “younger”.

“It’s as awful a case as I have seen in regards to the depth of the depravity of the offending,” says Jim Gamble, a former head of the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.

“We knew initially there were Category A, B and C images; when people hear that, very often they don’t understand what that means.

“Category A imagery is penetrative sexual activity with a child and includes bestiality.

“The bottom line is: you’re looking at the worst type of offences and the scars won’t just be physical, they’ll be mental. For those victims who have survived this, it’s going to take years for them to come to terms to be able to even cope with the trauma that will follow.”

Journalists were initially banned from reporting the identity of the US victim who died by suicide.

Cimarron Thomas from West Virginia died in May 2018 after she begged McCartney not to send sexual photographs to her father over a four-day period.

When she refused his demands to involve her sister in a sex act and then threatened to kill herself, he told her to “dry her eyes” and began counting down from 20 to one until her death.

Her nine-year-old sister discovered her body.

Following the lifting of reporting restrictions, it also emerged that the child’s father, Bill Thomas, a former US army veteran, died by suicide 18 months later.

During McCartney’s last court appearance when a defence barrister outlined harrowing chat conversations recovered from his devices – in which the children are “crying and shaking ... pleading with him to leave them alone” – he sat in the dock with his head bowed and his hands covering his ears.

In one case, he threatened a girl that he would get people to come to her house and rape her if she didn’t comply.

Scottish police began investigating the student in 2018 after receiving a complaint. His computer and mobile phone were seized from his house on the country road.

When detectives examined the devices, they found thousands of images of young girls in “various states of dress and undress, performing various sexual acts”.

Concerns have been raised as to whether McCartney’s victims could have been protected earlier had the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) identified evidence sooner.

Searches were made on his home that led to computers, laptops and tablets and mobile being seized on four occasions from when he first came to police attention as a teenager.

He repeatedly breached bail conditions and by the time the final search took place in 2019, his offending had escalated through the use of a single mobile phone.

The PSNI referred themselves for investigation to the independent police watchdog, the Police Ombudsman, in 2021, following “concerns that the forensic examination of McCartney’s computers and electronic devices may have been delayed” in the initial stages of its investigation.

The watchdog report is currently being drafted.

For Jim Gamble, the case will have a “ripple effect” due to the scale of offending and “legacy of pain” for so many victims, many of whom are yet to be identified. The former police officer and online safeguarding expert warned that people shouldn’t be “seduced into a false sense of security” by thinking, this is an unprecedented case “and that’s it all over”.

“There are lots and lots of versions of this case going on in spaces every single day,” he said. “That’s why parents and carers and young people themselves need to be much more vigilant in the digitally engaged world that they live in.”

Conversations parents have with their children “should not be about the particular hardware or software they’re using” but about “making sure they can come and talk to you if they’re ever worried”, he said.

“It’s about using a case like this to say: ‘My goodness, did you see that case?’ Follow it up with a conversation by asking about catfishing to allow that young person to unpack what they know.”

Gamble believes it is important to reflect on the fact that McCartney was a “child himself” when he “began his journey as a predator”.

“And so, the discussion you have with your children isn’t just about protecting them from others; it’s about ensuring that something that may start off as something they think is funny, something that might start off at the lowest end of pretending to be someone else, to tease somebody, can grow to the point that you could find yourself in trouble one day – and nobody wants that.”