WARNING | 

Paedo Paul Farrell’s victim says, ‘Being in wheelchair doesn’t make him any less dangerous’

Sex abuse survivor wants people to see paedo’s face after release from prison

Today at 07:00

The victim of wheelchair bound paedophile Paul Farrell has warned he will always be a danger to children following his release from prison.

Our exclusive pictures show the ‘remorseless’ child abuser being escorted from a taxi into his home in Baldoyle on Thursday afternoon — two hours after he was released from the Midlands Prison.

The 67-year-old served just 18 months of the two-year-sentence he received for repeated sexual assaults perpetrated on his then 12-year-old niece Anita Byrne in 1992 and 1993.

Sickeningly, the beast carried out the first sexual assault in July 1992 on the day of Anita’s grandfather’s removal mass.

“He’s a liar, a paedophile and a predator,” Anita told us after seeing the images of Farrell’s return home.

“And I want everyone to see and remember his face so they can keep their children safe fr

“He was already disabled because of an accident when he abused me in 1992.

“So being in a wheelchair doesn’t make him any less dangerous to children.”

The details of the sexual assaults Farrell perpetrated on Anita, and the lies he told to cover up his horrific crimes, emerged over the course of his contested trial in July of 2022.

Farrell had admitted his guilt to Anita and her partner Darren when they confronted him about the abuse in 2014 but he entered a not guilty plea in court and, worse still, made up a disgusting claim that Anita had invented the abuse in a bid to get money from him.

“I was just 12 the first time it happened,” Anita told us this week. “My grandfather had passed away and we were all over in the house for his removal.”

Farrell, who was already disabled and unsteady on his feet as a result of a car accident in his 20s, pounced on his niece as she went to get something from a cupboard.

The court heard he placed his hands under her clothes and underwear and was about to touch her genital area when she turned around and left the room.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” she recalled. “I just went into a blind panic and I froze. I couldn’t move for what felt like minutes … but eventually, I got the strength, I don’t know from where, and I managed to push him away.

“And I got out of the room and into the bathroom. I was in there a good while crying and shaking. When I came out, he was standing there and he said to me: ‘Don’t you open your mouth. Say nothing. No-one will believe you’.”

After that, Anita said Farrell assaulted her at every available opportunity over the next nine months.

“I was groped at the door whenever he could,” she said.

As a result of the assaults, Anita stopped visiting her grandmother’s home and was unable to see her nan before she died.

It wasn’t until 2014 that Anita felt able to confront Farrell about what he had done to her. “Darren and I went to down to his house in 2014 to confront him,” she said.

“He asked us in, but he already knew why we were there. I asked him why he did it to me and his answer was — I had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He said it could have been any one of us, meaning me or my cousins.

“And that was his why — I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but even that day, he never apologised.”

After confessing his guilt, Anita said Farrell asked her what she was going to do before offering her money to stay quiet.

“He offered to get a loan from the credit union to give me money if I’d stay quiet, something I immediately refused,” she said. “But when the case came up in court, he twisted that completely.

“He had an accident a few months after we went to confront him. So, he tried to make out in court that I had made up the abuse to get money from his settlement but, the dates didn’t match up.

“We had confronted him in August 2014 but his accident, he fell down the ramp or something on a CIE bus, didn’t happen until the following November.

“So, the judge and jury were able to see his lies for what they were. He tried to put me and my character on trial. But in the end, his lies just proved in court what a remorseless child abuser he is.”

Sentencing Farrell to two years in prison, after the jury convicted him of one count of sexual assault and 10 sample counts, Judge Patricia Ryan noted that the first offence had occurred on the occasion of the death of Anita’s grandfather.

She said the fact Farrell told Anita to stay silent would be considered an aggravating factor.

For Anita, seeing Farrell jailed, came as an enormous relief. “I felt elated and relieved,” she said. “Because of his disability, it had always been at the back of our minds that he might get a suspended sentence.

Anita said seeing Farrell get out of prison after 18 months does not diminish her belief that she was right to go forward with her complaint.

“Seeing him get let out of prison after just 18 months does make me angry,” she said. “But, at the end of the day, I know I did my bit.

“I got justice and he was jailed for what he did to me. I got justice and he was jailed for what he did to me.”