A 65-year-old paedophile will be jailed for 26 years for the abuse of numerous children who were as young as 9 at the time.
In court, Eugene Sullivan was identified as a serial paedophile who tormented young girls for about a decade. He reportedly drugged the children and threatened to kill them if they told anyone about what he was doing to them.
One of the victims says that Sullivan put drugs in her drink before assaulting her. He told her that the attack was a “life lesson.”
There were at least four victims who testified against him, but there may be many others who did not come forward. All of the victims who did come forward said that he abused them on multiple occasions over a long period of time.
Despite denying the accusations, Sullivan was found guilty on four counts of rape and 13 counts of indecent assault.
One of the victims spoke during sentencing, saying that, “My emotional state was never the same. I have dealt with mental health issues ever since. I have hated myself every day since that happened. I turned to drugs to forget which later turned to an eating disorder, both of which I had to get professional help for.”
“You were the worst thing to ever happen to me but I will not let you control me any more,” she said.
Other victim statements, which were read to the court by prosecutors, said that the girls were traumatized.
Judge Richard Williams described Sullivan as a “predatory paedophile.”
In a 2007 report, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that 20% of women and 4% of men in the UK have experienced some type of sexual assault since the age of 16, which is equivalent to 3.4 million female and 631,000 male victims.
Meanwhile, 3.1% of women (510,000) and 0.8% of men (138,000) between the ages of 16 and 59 had experienced a sexual assault in the year the survey was taken.
In 2018, the police in England and Wales recorded 73,260 sexual offences where there was data to identify the victim as a child.
