Opinion

Elaine Crory: After the horror of the McCartney case, we must be alert to sexual predators in our midst

It’s very tempting to describe a man like this as a monster. The truth is far more uncomfortable than that: he is a human man who did monstrous things

Alexander McCartney, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter of 12-year-old and 180 other charges linked to online abuse of children. PICTURE COURTESY OF NEWRY REPORTER
Alexander McCartney, who pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of a 12-year-old girl and 180 other charges linked to online abuse of children. PICTURE: NEWRY REPORTER

When you are a new parent, everyone comments on your baby. Strangers on the bus, distant relations, the woman who works in the post office, everyone has an opinion. Many ask if the baby is a boy or a girl.

And when that new parent was me, and both times I’d had a girl, lots of those people reacted with a little inward whistle, like the sound a plumber makes when he’s about to deliver bad news about the ‘small job’ you called him for.

Girls, people are very eager to tell you, are hard work to parent.

I thought about that when reading about the jailing of Alexander McCartney. The 26-year-old, from outside Newry, is believed to have abused up to 3,500 child victims, all online, with at least one, 12-year-old Cimarron Thomas, taking her own life as a result – it was the only way out that she saw when he tried to blackmail her into getting her younger sister involved in the abuse too.

McCartney was a systematic abuser. He had more than 60 devices that he used to approach and ‘catfish’ children all around the world. Once he had convinced them to share intimate pictures of themselves, he used those pictures to manipulate them into sending more and more, doing increasingly depraved acts.

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Many pleaded with him to stop, and he was continuously callous, telling them he did not care. In Cimarron Thomas’s case, he set a countdown clock for her to comply with his demands and was impassive as she took her own life. He continued to abuse other children, and he shared the abuse material he gathered with other paedophiles online.

Cimarron Thomas took her own life in May 2018 following online contact with Alexander McCartney

It’s very tempting to describe a man like this as a monster. The truth is far more uncomfortable than that: he is a human man who did monstrous things.

Detective Chief Superintendent Eamonn Corrigan from the PSNI described him as “relentless and cruel”, with the PPS’s Catherine Kierans said it was one of the most “depraved, distressing and prolific cases of child sexual abuse that we have ever seen”.

Catfishing crimes of depraved predator Alexander McCartney emphasise online dangers - The Irish News viewOpens in new window ]

McCartney’s character, including what Mr Justice O’Hara noted as a total lack of remorse, seems to be so obviously malicious that it is hard to see him as a human man, once a human boy. But he is, and he was.

The story came to light when a brave 13-year-old Scottish girl called the police. McCartney had been on their radar since he himself was a teenager, and had devices seized four times by police, the contents of which were eventually used to build this case, and the case of the manslaughter of Cimarron Thomas.

All that time he was living an outwardly quiet life, sharing a home with his parents, studying computer science. I can’t help wondering what his parents said to him when the police raided their home, repeatedly. I can’t help wondering whether anyone in his life asked why he bought so many phones and other devices.

Prolific online predator Alexander McCartney has been jailed for a minimum of 20 years (PSNI)
Prolific online predator Alexander McCartney has been jailed for a minimum of 20 years

I can’t help wondering why, in the well-meaning messaging of police and other agencies, parents are encouraged to make sure their children know they can speak up and get help if they are catfished or abused online, but why the messaging never asks parents to check in with their children to make sure they aren’t abusing anyone online.

Another old and nonsensical adage is the one that says the internet isn’t real, that it’s a wild west playground with no consequences. Cases like this show that for the lie that it is, but most of us know it anyway.

Who hasn’t had some kind of verbal abuse or threat online? Certainly no woman in the public eye. Increasingly, no child either. The abuse can come from all corners but, especially with this kind of predatory abuse, it mostly comes from men.



I’ll be having a chat with my own 12-year-old daughter about being safe online, as I have before and I will again, but all the time I’ll be thinking of Cimarron Thomas.

I’ll be thinking of Alexander McCartney’s parents too, and what kinds of chats they had with him. Parenting is hard, and the quiet part of the message people want to communicate, when they stop just short of sympathising with you when you have a baby girl, is that they know how she will be treated in life as a result.

Maybe all of us, as parents, as friends, as community members, can start to look out for predators wherever they hide and however ordinary they appear, instead of treating horrific outcomes as the price of being born a girl.