A man described by police as a “heinous child predator” has been sentenced to 27 years in prison after pleading guilty to 130 charges of sexual abuse in a court in Northern Ireland.
David John Andrews, 55, was told he could serve a minimum of 13 and a half years after which the Parole Board would decide whether he could be released, but was described by the police as a danger to the community.
Andrews posed as a teenage boy on Snapchat and Instagram to lure 47 victims, 46 of whom were children and one of whom was a vulnerable adult, Downpatrick crown court heard. The youngest victim was eight years old.
His offences included rape, sexual activity with a person with a mental disorder impeding choice, blackmail and causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity.
The police said the charges also included attempts to pay for sexual services of a child, attempting to arrange or facilitate child prostitution and the making and possession of indecent images of children.
They found more than 10,000 illicit images on his electronic devices and approximately 40 different usernames he had used to pose as a young boys online.
Most of the crimes involved sextortion – the “catfishing” method of lying to people on social media to trap them into terrifying situations – but some involved direct abuse with a vulnerable adult woman.
In one incident, he sent images of a girl – which he procured through deception – to her friends. She was laughed at in school and failed her exams.
Delivering sentence, Judge Geoffrey Miller KC said he would not detail Andrews’ offending in full as it was “too harrowing and vile to be repeated” and showed a “depravity that is difficult to comprehend and which is utterly sickening.”
Miller said the abuse relating to the adult included Andrews dressing her up and taking explicit photographs, which he sometimes shared with other victims.
One reporter attending the hearing for RTÉ said the defendant laughed on and off during the lengthy sentencing comments.
One victim, whom the police have called Clare to protect her identity, spoke out to warn others. Now an adult, she told how Andrews claimed he was a boy from a school in a neighbouring town. After a few weeks, he asked her to share intimate images of herself.
When she and friends then worked out his photograph was fake, she felt “physically sick”, she said. When she tried to stop communication with him, he started to blackmail her. He then posed as the boy’s sister, claiming Clare had caused harm to him by not sending more intimate pictures.
“The next thing I know my images were shared around the majority of my year group. It has destroyed my life,” she said.
The case comes less than two months after one of the world’s biggest investigations into sextortion of children led to a life sentence for a 26-year-old man from Northern Ireland, Alexander McCartney.
He admitted 185 charges including manslaughter after one of his victims, 12-year-old Cimarron Thomas, from West Virginia, killed herself after McCartney threatened to share intimate images with her father. Her distraught father subsequently also died by suicide, never knowing his daughter was a victim of blackmail.
DCI Jill Duffie said after Andrews’ sentencing: “Andrews is a heinous child predator. He has caused unimaginable, long-lasting harm, not only for the young girls he preyed upon but also their families. I want to thank them today for being so incredibly brave and assisting our investigations.”
The head of the serious crime unit at the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland, Catherine Kierans, described Andrews as “a dangerous and devious paedophile who abused young children and teenagers online”.
