The details are sickening, the scale almost unimaginable and the tragedy absolute. Alexander McCartney’s crimes – the catfishing, blackmail and sexual exploitation of at least 70 known child victims across the globe – represent a level of depravity that beggars belief.
The actions of the Co Armagh man caused unquantifiable harm, the degradation of young lives and, in the cruellest turn, the death by suicide of 12-year-old American girl Cimarron Thomas, whom he had blackmailed, followed by the suicide of her father, Benjamin Jay Thomas.
McCartney, of Lissummon Road outside Newry, was last year sentenced to life imprisonment for 185 offences linked to the online sexual abuse of children living as far away as New Zealand and the US.
For a few short, shocking days, this case dominated the headlines. The horror elicited outrage, visceral disgust and sadness.
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But the news cycle has moved on. The initial blaze of anger has cooled, and other events and stories are occupying our attention.
This, in itself, is a tragedy. We seem afflicted by a collective amnesia that allows the systemic failings exposed by cases like this to fade back into the shadows until the next inevitable horror forces them back into the light.
Police believe the former Ulster University computer science student targeted more than 3,500 children globally.
We cannot and must not forget these victims, the vast majority as yet unidentified, whose lives have been irrevocably damaged by this man and others like him. The ability to forget is a luxury they will never have.
In the immediate wake of such cases, the public is horrified that it could happen and terrified that it might happen to one of their children. This understandably results in demands for accountability.
Yet what should be a genuine search for the truth too often becomes a search for a scapegoat, a quick fix, offering a false sense of reassurance that the problem has been found and addressed. In such circumstances, the finger of blame inevitably points to those on the front line: the police officers.
The Police Ombudsman’s report in Northern Ireland, published last week, found no misconduct. In fact, it was clear: the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) cybercrime teams were under-resourced, under pressure, and lacked the capacity or capability to effectively manage the escalating risk posed by McCartney.
The dedicated officers involved in this trauma-inducing work know the horror children face and keenly feel the pain of arriving too late. The cruel irony is that they are set up to fail by a system that has chronically and shamefully underinvested in the core mission of child protection.
They faced an impossible Hobson’s choice: a digital forensic lottery where a tsunami of data requires urgent attention, but a policy of prioritisation puts terrorism and organised crime ahead of the burgeoning epidemic of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Imagine the reality: five officers in a team that should be at least three times that size, tasked with wrestling a global, industrial-scale threat. The issue is not that the police failed; it is that they were never given the capacity and support to succeed.
The real, long-term failure lies squarely at the feet of politicians, in their decisions about what to prioritise and what to neglect. This is a political issue, compounded in Northern Ireland by the Assembly’s chronic instability and its failure, over many years, to ensure appropriate investment in policing, in specialist officers and a failure at a national level to build the industrial-level forensic capabilities needed to identify evidence held in digital devices.
Too many politicians revel in being “in charge of everything” but then, when it comes to accountability, hide behind being responsible for nothing, a crippling approach in Northern Ireland’s governance for far too long.
Others also have serious questions to answer.
The sentencing regime for CSAM is pitifully inadequate. Only two out of 10 convicted of possession of such images receive a custodial sentence. Such leniency does nothing to create an active deterrent.
From a risk management perspective, how could a predator suspected of online abuse be allowed to continue using the internet, unrestricted, until his third arrest? The ineffectiveness of bail conditions, which lacked supervision and resources for enforcement, amounted to an abysmal failure to manage the risk.
We must interrogate how agencies; the police, social care, and others, worked, or didn’t work, together. When restrictions were loosened on the back of social care advice, who was holding the line on risk? This failure demands a comprehensive, independent multi-agency review. If it were in one of the areas where I chair the Local Safeguarding Children Partnership, it would happen. So, what will the Safeguarding Board in Northern Ireland do?
Every politician finds it easy to point the final finger of blame at the Big Tech companies. They undoubtedly need to do more, to take ownership of the digital ecosystems their services have created. But make no mistake: this is fundamentally about the behaviour of people; the “nature of the beast” the inherent depravity of offenders like McCartney.
The lesson of the McCartney case is not merely about one failed investigation; it is about a systemic, long-term failure of vision and investment by those in power.
Police services worldwide, including An Garda Síochána, are struggling with this epidemic because too many in positions of influence failed to see what was coming.
So, as the politicians, especially those in Northern Ireland, line up to defend and divert any criticism for themselves, my advice is simple: before you point the finger, take a long, hard look in the mirror.
Jim Gamble is the chief executive officer of the INEQE Safeguarding Group and is the Independent Safeguarding Children and Young People’s Commissioner of several London Safeguarding Children’s Boards. He was the founding chair of the Virtual Global Taskforce; a former national policing lead for child protection and the architect and CEO of the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre.
