A father whose two girls were cruelly sexually exploited by ‘Britain’s worst catfish’ Alexander McCartney has told of the horrific moment he realised they had been duped.
He revealed how the older girl still bears ‘profound’ mental scars of being blackmailed into allowing the ‘sadistic and evil’ computer science student to abuse her younger sister, then ten.
His harrowing testimony comes as McCartney – who used Snapchat to target more than 70 victims worldwide – admitted today the manslaughter of American youngster Cimarron Thomas, 12.
Cimarron used her father’s handgun to take her own life after being blackmailed online by the computer student. Tragically, eighteen months after the young girl’s death, her grief-stricken father Ben, a former US army veteran, took his own life.
So prolific were McCartney’s activities, that his victims came from all corners of the globe, including in New Zealand, 11,000 miles away from his Northern Ireland home.
It was here, the distressed father-of-two recalls, that his ‘outgoing, intelligent, funny’ 12-year-old daughter used her tablet to keep in touch with schoolfriends via Snapchat.
Unbeknown to her parents, one of her online friends – on the face of it a girl around her own age – was in reality McCartney, preying on her.
Still in his teens himself, McCartney is believed to have exploited his youth in order to message his victims using ‘age appropriate’ language.
A mugshot of ‘Britain’s worst catfish’ Alexander McCartney who lived in Northern Ireland
A new photograph of Cimarron Thomas, 12, of Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, which was issued today following the sentencing of Alexander McCartney who drove her to take her own life
After tricking her into sharing explicit photographs of herself in 2017, he revealed he was a ‘catfish’ – and instructed her to rope in her younger sister, threatening to share the images unless she complied.
McCartney even tried to take further advantage by demanding she trick her teenage cousin into sending photos.
Thankfully, despite being threatened by McCartney, the cousin realised his demands were wrong.
She contacted the girls’ parents who in turn went to police in New Zealand – although it would be another two years before his true identity was finally exposed.
‘McCartney just randomly added my eldest daughter through Snapchat as a friend, and then over the coming months built up a friendship,’ their father told the Mail.
Duped by profile photos stolen from a previous victim, the 12-year-old had no idea her new Snapchat friend was anything other than a girl her age.
‘Eventually they got to a point where they exchanged photos,’ he said. ‘So she sent him a nude picture. And once he had that, he obviously had all the power, and she was playing by his rules.
‘And he then used that to blackmail and manipulate her further, which included bringing my youngest daughter into it, so she ended up sending photos of her as well.’
The betrayal was only uncovered when McCartney tried to extend his clutches to the girls’ teenage cousin.
‘Thankfully, she was mature enough and smart enough to involve my wife and I,’ he said. ‘We went straight to the police. It left the family ‘devastated.
‘As parents, it’s one thing to watch them at the playground or think about what they’re doing at school or with friends or whatever.
Alexander McCartney (pictured), 26, operated from the bedroom of his family home in rural Northern Ireland and persuaded young girls to send naked pictures of themselves
Cimarron Thomas (left) with her US army veteran father Ben Thomas, who later took his own life after being consumed with guilt for leaving his gun where his daughter could access it
Cimarron and Ben Thomas with mother Stephanie. The double tragedy ripped apart the family
‘But in the safety of her own home, in her bedroom, she should be safe. And obviously we’ve found out the hard way how online offending just has no boundaries. And so as parents, we’re gutted.’
He remains worried about the long-term trauma to his elder daughter about knowing she was duped into letting McCartney target her sister – despite her now realising she was one of many victims of his sophisticated catfish campaign.
‘It’s devastating that she has to carry that burden with her. My youngest daughter is completely oblivious to it. She just thought it was two sisters playing dress up and taking photos and doing silly stuff.
‘She’s never been made aware of what the photos were for, so thankfully, she’s just blissfully unaware. But it’s obviously had a very profound and severe impact on our eldest daughter.’
Both his elder daughter and her cousin have now given evidence which helped ensure McCartney had no choice but to plead guilty.
‘I think in time my daughter will hopefully be proud of the part that she’s played in bringing him to justice,’ the father said.
‘She was obviously very trusting, as all young people tend to be. She was innocent. She was manipulated, by a sadistic and evil person. She’ll obviously carry it with her forever.’
Seven years on, the girls’ parents struggle to comprehend how they could both be abused by a teenager in his own bedroom in a quiet, rural community on the other side of the world.
‘He knew exactly what he was doing,’ the father said.
‘He was he was calculated and systematic with his manipulation, and it’s hard to fathom that anyone gets any kind of gratification from doing something like this, whether it be sexual or just the power that it gives him over people.
McCartney used his technical knowledge as a computer science student to carry out his crimes, said the prosecution
In horrific messages between Alexander McCartney and one of his child victims, his perverted tactics are laid bare as he can be seen joking and flirting before suddenly turning nasty
‘He’s obviously honed his craft over a significant period of time to be able to lure this many people in. And our hearts go out to the family in America that obviously lost their daughter to it.’
Campaigners have called for tech firms to be forced to take responsibility for harm inflicted through their platforms.
But the girls’ father believes the priority for parents of children their age today is to teach them that it’s all right to report anything sinister they encounter online.
In his view, social media sites are ‘more than aware of how easy it is to create a fake profile and steal photos and make themselves look like somebody else’.
‘Kids come home from school and they want to talk to their friends, and they do it via text, or they jump online and chat, or they’re playing online games and chatting to people while they do that.
‘And you can’t completely shield them from all of that, that’s the way the world is now.
‘It’s about creating an environment and in a relationship where they feel safe to go to mum or go to dad or go to a friend or go to Nana and say, ‘Hey, look, something doesn’t feel right here, I’m not comfortable’.
‘Making them know that they haven’t done anything wrong and that being manipulated or blackmailed by somebody else isn’t their fault.’
He warned that girls of the age his daughters were in 2017 remain ‘prime targets’ to another McCartney today, particularly if they are ‘introverted’ and find the online world ‘their way of escaping their reality’.
‘I feel like it would be pretty easy to do what people like McCartney are doing. So any awareness I can help raise, if we can save one person from going through this, then it’s worthwhile.
Cimarron Thomas (pictured) was subject to sick blackmailing online by McCartney and used her father’s handgun to take her own life
Cimarron (pictured with her father Ben) was told that if she did not comply with McCartney’s requests, her photos would be sent to her father
Cimarron’s mother Stephanie (pictured left) still struggles to deal with the loss of her husband and daughter six years after the double tragedy – she is pictured here with Cimarron
‘The more people can maybe just have something blinking in the back of the head that says, ‘hang on a second here, this isn’t this doesn’t feel right, this is way too easy’. Or ‘Why does this person like me?’
‘I want everyone to bring someone else into the conversation and have someone they can reach out to say, ‘Hey, this doesn’t feel right, and I’m not comfortable. And can you help me?’
‘Even if I looked at my daughter’s phone right now, I bet there’s one person in there that she’s never met. You know, there’ll be someone who’s a friend of a friend, or something like that. So I just think it’s so easy.
‘They’re so innocent and they just don’t know any better. They don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t understand blackmail. They don’t understand what manipulation is. Why would this person try and do this to me?
‘It’s just a scary, and in New Zealand here, we’re a small town and a small country, ignorance is bliss. What are the chances that happens to me? Well, it’s a very good chance that’ll happen to you.
‘Because these people don’t care where they are, as long as they get what they want, all right?’
Police and prosecutors have themselves faced trauma from having to view abuse footage seized from McCartney’s devices – something for which the girls’ father feels intense sympathy.
He said: ‘My heart goes out to them having to deal with this kind of stuff on a day to day basis, and no doubt, wade through photos and communication trails of things that he’s made people do.
‘You’ve got to be a pretty strong-minded person to be able to go home at night and try and switch that off.’
Catherine Kierans, from the Northern Ireland Public Prosecution Service, said McCartney was estimated to have targeted 3,500 girls – some as young as 10.
Despite exhaustive efforts, however, many of his victims may never be identified.
She urged any child or young person to seek help if they were being threatened by someone demanding sexual images or videos.
She said: ‘This is a crime. You are not to blame. Please talk to a trusted adult.’
And she called on parents and carers to talk to their children to keep them safe online, adding: ‘It is by bringing these issues out into the open that we can break the cycle of secrecy abusers rely on.’
As McCartney’s horrific crimes have come to light, relatives of Cimarron Thomas have spoken openly about the double tragedy that ripped through their family.
They said today that McCartney should have been charged with the murder of Cimarron and are outraged that he will likely not spend the rest of his life in prison.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline an uncle said: ‘He might as well have pulled the trigger himself and killed both my niece and brother.
‘That man has torn the family apart. He should have been charged with murder and spend the rest of his life in prison.
The Thomas family initially had no idea why their daughter (pictured) had taken her life and were unaware of the depravity she had been subjected to
‘It has been so hard for all the family to come to terms with what he did. We have all struggled.’
The girl’s grandfather Dale has a memorial bench dedicated to his son and granddaughter outside his home in Frostburg, Maryland.
Emblazoned with the badge of his son’s regiment, the 10th Mountain Division, it has the words ‘Faith had brought us through’ below the name of his granddaughter.
Dale, 76, told MailOnline he was still too distressed to talk about the double tragedy but added: ‘We just want this all to be over and to end.’
In an impact statement read to the court in Belfast he said the family’s lives would never be the same.
What has made the ordeal even worse was that until police found the online chat between McCartney and Cimarron in 2021 on his computer the family had no idea why she had shot herself.
Cimarron Thomas, 12, (pictured) used her father’s handgun to take her own life after being blackmailed online by McCartney
A tribute to Cimarron Thomas, 12, (pictured in the frame centre) who took her own life
Family members said her 40-year-old father lost his will to live after his daughter’s death and was overcome with guilt from leaving his handgun where it could be easily accessed.
The full horrific extent of the events leading up to Cimarron’s death in May 2018 were revealed in court by prosecutor David McDowell KC.
From his bedroom in Newry, South Armagh he had posed as a girl called Sarah to make online contact with Cimarron who was at the family’s remote farmhouse in the hamlet of Bruceton Mills – which has a population of less than 80.
After persuading her to send him a topless photo by flattering her with comments about her body he suddenly revealed his true identity and demanded she submit to his demands for sexually depraved photos.
Cimarron was told if she did not comply her photos would be sent to her father.
In gut wrenching detail the prosecutor described how Cimarron pleaded with McCartney to stop.
Even when she was visibly distressed and crying, he told her to ‘dry her eyes’ and involve her younger sister aged nine in a sex act.
Cimarron refused and said she would rather kill herself with McCartney cruelly launching a countdown and telling her: ‘goodbye and good luck’.
The court heard Cimarron’s sister later heard a popping sound that she thought was a balloon bursting.
But when she went into her parents Stephanie and Ben’s bedroom she saw Cimarron on the floor and a gun by her side.
The young girl had used her father’s Heckler and Koch handgun to take her own life.
The Thomas family had no idea why their daughter had taken her life and were unaware of the depravity she had been subjected to.
Her mother told investigators that she might have been unsure of her sexuality but since her death has barely been able to talk about losing her and her husband.
Six years on from the death of her daughter her mother still struggles with her loss and that of her husband.
A family friend said she suffers from PTSD and never speaks about the tragic events.
‘When the police from Northern Ireland asked to meet with her she just could not do it,’ said a family friend.
‘It was too much, and she refused to meet with them. I don’t know if she did later meet but we heard it was all too traumatic for her.’
During a pre-sentencing hearing McCartney, who used Snapchat to target over 70 victims worldwide, sat with his hands covering his ears as the prosecutor spent 90 minutes detailing his horrific ‘degrading and humiliating’ acts.
McCartney had deliberately chosen to catfish girls who were gay or unsure of their sexuality to obtain photos and then blackmail them into handing over even more intimate photos with the threat of exposing them.
He admitted to 184 counts including blackmail and child sex abuse.
Under a recently-introduced law in Northern Ireland victims of a sex crime are granted anonymity for 25 years.
