A 22-year-old man has been jailed for nine years for the rape of two very young girls he met on Snapchat.
The Central Criminal Court heard that David O’Sullivan, previously of Ballick Road, Midleton, Co Cork, and St Vincent’s Avenue, Woodquay, Galway, groomed the girls for months before meeting them and raping them. The girls, who are from different parts of the country and are unknown to each other, were aged 14 and 10 when he raped them.
After his arrest last March, gardaí found 1,629 files of downloaded child sexual abuse material on a mobile phone belonging to him.
Ms Justice Melanie Greally imposed a sentence of 11½ years for the rapes and for possession of child abuse material. She suspended the final 2½ years on condition that he keep the peace, engage with sexual offence treatment and not contact either of the victims for 50 years.
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Det Insp Fergus Gaughan told John Berry SC, prosecuting, that O’Sullivan was aged 19 when he met the first victim in June 2022 on Snapchat and told her he was aged 16, the court heard. She was aged 13 at the time and told him this.
The court heard that O’Sullivan asked her to meet up a number of times but she said she didn’t really want to. He showed up at her home and climbed into her bedroom window and they kissed.
The child’s mother discovered him in the bedroom and threw him out. They were clothed but the mother alerted gardaí.
Gardaí later stopped O’Sullivan near the girl’s home at 1am and spoke to him. The child’s family were at this point reluctant to press charges and he was given an adult caution.
O’Sullivan later bought the girl a mobile phone and a credit card that her parents weren’t aware of and continued to contact her using this phone. On a date in February 2023, he asked the girl to meet him in a shopping centre.
They went to the stairwell of the building and he gave her vodka and orally raped her. He told her the vodka wasn’t for free, pulled her clothes down and raped her again.
Afterwards the girl called her mother. She came to pick her up and saw that the child was drunk and upset. The victim told her what had happened and gardaí were contacted.
Gardaí arrested O’Sullivan in January 2025 and he admitted knowing the victim but denied any sexual activity. A file was prepared and the case was sent forward for trial.
The victim told the court that the rape left her feeling degraded and ashamed. She said she feels depressed all the time, has had suicidal ideation and feels broken.
She finished her victim impact statement by telling O’Sullivan: “I no longer want to be a victim, I want to be a survivor. You did not break my spirit. Your power is now gone.”
In August 2024, O’Sullivan was living in Co Galway and made contact with a 10-year-old girl on Snapchat. He said he was 13 years old and she told him she was 14.
The conversation became sexualised, with O’Sullivan sending her explicit images of his genitals and asking her to send him pictures of her private parts.
They began to meet and O’Sullivan would buy her alcohol and vapes. Det Insp Gaughan said that over the following four months O’Sullivan continued to groom the victim. This included a pattern of meeting in scrublands and under link road bridges where he would orally rape her.
On one occasion in October, he vaginally raped her in a field.
The court heard that the victim believed she was in a relationship with O’Sullivan. In relation to the sexual activity, she told gardaí “he didn’t give up, so I gave in”.
She said O’Sullivan told her he would kill her father if she told anyone about him and later said that somebody had raped his sister and that he had killed this person and buried him.
This frightened the victim and she tried to block him on Snapchat but he repeatedly created new identities on the platform in order to contact her.
At one point Snapchat blocked his actual phone because of the number of profiles linked to it, Det Insp Gaughan said.
O’Sullivan continued to send her sexually explicit texts up to March 2025. On December 26th last he asked her to send a photo and record a video.
Last March the girl told her fifth-class teacher about O’Sullivan’s behaviour after she had attended a lesson informing pupils about inappropriate sexual touching.
In her victim impact statement the second girl said she knew what O’Sullivan was doing was wrong but felt like she couldn’t say no to him.
“When he forced me to have sex with him, it made me feel vulnerable,” she said.
Det Insp Gaughan agreed with Donal O’Sullivan SC, defending, that O’Sullivan told gardaí the second victim told him she was aged 17 and in one message she said she was 15.
On September 10th last, O’Sullivan pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to rape and oral rape of the first victim in February 2023. He also pleaded guilty to communication with a child for the purpose of sexual exploitation.
He further pleaded guilty to four counts of rape and one of oral rape of the second child on dates between August and November 2024.
He pleaded guilty to communicating with the second child for the purpose of sexually exploiting her.
Counsel asked the court to consider the personal circumstances of the defendant who was adopted by an Irish couple after he was abandoned as a child to an orphanage in his native Russia.
He said his client’s adopted family were “decent people” who continued to support him while accepting the things he has done are “terrible things”.
The judge set headline sentences of 10 years and 15 years for the rape of the respective victims, to run concurrently. She reduced the overall sentence to nine years in light of the “significant” mitigating factors, including the guilty pleas, and his young age at the time.
O’Sullivan must have no access to mobile phone apps frequented by children and no future contact with the victims or their family for 50 years, Ms Justice Greally outlined.
