April 2016
Rapist caged for life over Runcorn abuse
A ‘devious’ rapist who preyed on multiple victims from Runcorn has been caged for life.
Christopher O’Brien, 37, also known as Draffan O’Brien, was told he would spend a minimum of 10 years minus 200 days on remand before he was considered for parole for offences against two children and a teenager.
Many of the crimes were committed during O’Brien’s own childhood and early teenage years, but some also when he was an adult.
On Friday at Warrington Crown Court, O’Brien faced justice for 16 charges, most of which were for rape and the remainder for indecent assault, after he was found guilty by a jury.
The court heard O’Brien was arrested on September 29 last year – the day he left HMP Altcourse having spent four years of an eight-year sentence behind bars after he was convicted in Manchester of 12 counts of rape and one of sexual assault against another adult victim, who was pregnant during one of the offences.
Judge Tina Landale, presiding, said he had shown no remorse and remained ‘dangerous’.
Judge Landale said O’Brien had features including a ‘high sex drive’ and ‘an obsession with pornography involving animals, and pregnant women’ that combined to make him a particular danger.
Nor were his victims limited by age or gender, she said.
O’Brien’s vile offending involved repeated abuse, stifling his victims’ protests and grooming.
He threatened one victim that her mother would go to prison if the child ever revealed he had abused her.
The court heard O’Brien had been ‘emboldened’ to offend again after the authorities did not even interview him when his first victim tried to reveal his abuse.
O’Brien had said he himself had been a victim of sexual abuse, at the hands of two separate perpetrators on two separate occasions during his childhood, something he claimed had left him with ‘post traumatic stress disorder’.
Sentencing O’Brien, Judge Landale said: “You are just 37 years of age.
“You demonstrate a toxic combination of a very high sex drive, following by an extreme obsession with pornography and you have no sexual boundaries, whether the victim is female, male, a child or an adult and this leads you to sexual abuse anyone who’s vulnerable.
“It’s clear that your thinking towards sexual matters is distorted and I have no reason whatsoever to believe you will engage in any meaningful way to address your thinking and behaviour.”
O’Brien’s last address was HMP Altcourse with his most recent residential address listed with the court as Oswald Road, Manchester.
