A man from Northern Ireland who drove a 12-year-old child to suicide has been jailed for life.
Alexander McCartney, from County Armagh, is the abuser at the heart of the UK’s “largest catfishing case,” who was today found guilty of extreme online sexual abuse of children, and the manslaughter of an American child, who was one of his victims. Victims were identified all over the world, including in New Zealand. Austria and the US.
McCartney admitted a total of 185 charges, involving 70 children and including more than 50 blackmail offences. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter after the 12-year-old child took her own life while he was abusing her. The abuser carried out his online ‘catfishing’ of his victims between 2013 and 2019.
One PSNI investigator described the scale of offending by McCartney as a “paedophile enterprise,” and police believe he may have targeted 3,500 children from around the world.
Cimarron Thomas was 12 years old in 2018 when she used her father’s handgun to kill herself. Cimarron, from West Virginia, loved elephants, was a talented violin player, and enjoyed chatting with friends on Snapchat. She had met McCarthy, then a student, online, and was being sexually abused and blackmailed online by the then 20-year-old.
McCartney, from outside Newry, posed online as a teenage girl called Sarah to befriend young females on Snapchat before abusing them. He had demanded that Cimarron send topless images and involve her younger sister in sex acts. McCartney eventually revealed his true identity to Cimarron and said that if she did not obey his requests, he would send an image to her father. However, the child said she would rather kill herself than have McCartney do so.
The court heard how McCartney launched a countdown, telling her: “Goodbye and good luck.”
The Armagh man had first made contact with the child from the bedroom of his childhood home just four days before her death, and had blackmailed the 12-year-old into sending images. While she believed the ordeal was over, he contacted her again on 10 May 2018, with Cimarron repeatedly asking McCartney to leave her alone, while he coerced her into sending further images.
At one stage, she told him: “I don’t like this.” Cimarron went on to warn McCartney she would call the police, but he simply responded: “IDC” (I don’t care).
Cimarron’s heartbroken father, Ben Thomas, took his own life 18 months later – never knowing why his daughter had ended her life. The family were unaware at the time that Cimarron had been the victim of online blackmail, and were clueless as to why she took her own life. It was not until 2021 that police uncovered a conversation between Cimarron and McCartney on his computer.
Belfast Crown Court heard on Friday that a PSNI officer who reviewed the material said that the 12-year-old was “utterly distraught and sobbing at the time”.
When McCartney demanded she send images of her nine-year-old sister, she replied: “Please, not her.”
The court heard that when Cimarron refused McCarney’s demands repeatedly, he began a cruel countdown of 30 seconds before he threatened to post the pictures of her online.
He told her: “I am posting, bye. Ben Thomas first (Cimarron’s father). He should see the pix first.”Cimarron responded: “No, I will obey.”
The conversation then stopped. Three minutes later, Cimarron’s nine-year-old sister found her body lying on the floor in her parents’ bedroom. Cimarron had shot herself with her father’s handgun. Cimarron died later that night in hospital.
Handing down a life sentence to McCartney at Belfast Crown Court on Friday, Mr Justice O’Hara said McCartney must serve 20 years in jail before he can be considered for release.
Speaking at Belfast Crown Court, the judge said that to his knowledge, there had not been a case such as the present one where a defendant had 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.”
Judge O’Hara said that McCartney was “remorseless” and had ignored multiple opportunities to stop.
“He ignored multiple pleas for mercy. He lied and lied and then lied again.”
He added: “In my judgement, it is truly difficult to think of a sexual deviant who poses a greater risk than this defendant.”
McCartney previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter relating to Cimarron’s death.
In a victim impact statement, Cimarron’s grandparents said: “Our lives will never be the same.
“We didn’t get to see her graduate, walk down the aisle or have children. We have been robbed of those memories. Our lives have changed forever.”
In the statement read out after the judgement, they wrote: “We all have been devastated by our granddaughter’s passing.
“We know that nothing that we do or say will bring her back. But if we can help another family to not have to go through what we did, something good could come out of her death.
“Parents, please keep the doors of communication open concerning the evil of some people online.”