A “predatory sex offender” who abused a young teenage boy in a public park has been jailed for 32 months.
Judge Peter Irvine KC told Ciaran McAuley (35) he was such a danger to the public, and especially to teenage boys, that he was imposing an extended jail sentence.
McAuley, originally from Belfast and who boxed for Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games, had earlier entered guilty pleas to meeting a child following sexual grooming, two charges of sexual activity with a child and one of attempting to meet a second boy following sexual grooming, between August 31 2011 and January 1 2012.
Prosecuting counsel David McNeill outlined to Newry Crown Court that as a result of a story in the Belfast Telegraph the first victim came forward in February 2021 to report that he recognised the defendant as the man who had sexually assaulted him when he was 14.
That incident related to the first three counts on the indictment but the court heard that the victim disclosed the incident to one of his friends and that McAuley also tried to make arrangements to meet that boy as well.
Mr McNeill revealed that at the time McAuley has since "been convicted of nine sex offences and four breaches of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order".
McAuley was first jailed for two years in December 2015 after carrying out a sex attack on a nine-year-old boy in the New Lodge area of Belfast as he was walking home from a funfair.
During his sentencing remarks, Judge Irvine revealed that on the day he got out of prison from that sentence, McAuley grabbed a 14-year-old boy and dragged him down an alleyway, “holding a knife to his throat while he carried out a number of sex acts on him”.
The judge said it was clear from the various reports that McAuley is a persistent and predatory sex offender who has “expressed no remorse for his actions,” assessed as a high likelihood of further offences and who clearly poses a significant risk of causing serious harm, especially to boys.
In addition to the extended jail sentence, Judge Irvine also ordered McAuley to sign the police sex offenders register for the rest of his life and made him the subject of a lifelong SOPO.