‘Clean-cut’ teenager you never want your daughter to meet...
Mum’s warning as online sex predator found guilty
WITH his oversized quiff, slight frame and childlike features that belie his age, he looks like a poster boy for the Snapchat generation.
But Dillan Mannarn is not the fresh-faced boy next door – he is a predator who raped and sexually abused vulnerable girls, and had sex with underage schoolgirls.
The 19-year-old also blackmailed teenagers into sending him nude pictures and videos as part of a sinister four-year campaign.
Last night, the mother of one of his victims told how he targeted her child – and said youngsters’ obsession with social media is putting them at risk.
Speaking from her Edinburgh home, the woman told The Scottish Mail on Sunday: ‘I was devastated that my daughter didn’t have the confidence to tell me about it.’
The girl, now 17, was 14 when she accepted a Facebook friend request from Mannarn in May 2017. They had never met.
Her mother said: ‘She had started to be more isolated, shutting herself off in her bedroom but obviously when you have teenagers, you just put that down to part of it. So I never thought anything of it.
‘She was always quite honest about if someone messaged her, or asked to add her. So I was quite confident I knew what was going on.’
Around September 2017, however, she discovered her daughter had been groomed into sending naked pictures of herself to Mannarn, who then used the images to blackmail her. The mother said: ‘She had a tantrum, threw her phone and I confiscated it.
‘That’s when I came across a message saying he was going to post these pictures up online.’
Mannarn had been contacting the girl via Facebook Messenger.
Her mother said: ‘Very quickly, he had asked her to send him nudes. And very stupidly, she did it.
‘She’d sent him pictures with underwear on, then he’d asked for ones with underwear off.
‘Then he asked her to perform a sexual act on herself and video it for Snapchat, and she said no.’
Snapchat is a free mobile phone app used to share photos, videos, text and drawings.
Messages are supposed to disappear from the recipient’s phone after a few seconds – but Mannarn found a loophole to store the images. A court heard Snapchat was one of his main methods of contacting his victims.
The girl had asked Mannarn: ‘You’re going to post pictures of me even though I’m 14?’ He told her: ‘You had a choice. Don’t care. Add my Snapchat [to your phone] and end it all [the blackmail].’ Her mum said: ‘I was devastated. But the first thing I did was reassure her she hadn’t done anything wrong.’
Mother and daughter were horrified when police told them how many other women and girls Mannarn had targeted. Last week, a jury at the High Court in Edinburgh found him guilty of sexually abusing a string of young women from the Edinburgh area between February 2015 and June last year.
His 15 offences included raping a sleeping woman and raping another after allegedly blackmailing her into a sex act – but he was cleared of two further rapes.
In addition to the underage sex charges, Mannarn was convicted of attempting to meet a 14-year-old girl for sex and asking her to send him nude images.
He was convicted of secretly filming himself having sex with two victims, threatening to publish intimate videos and images of them on the internet, and using the images to extort further sexual photographs and films from them.
Mannarn, who was also added to the sex offenders’ register, is due to be sentenced later this month.
Research by the NSPCC children’s charity last year showed one in 25 young people has sent, received or been asked to send sexual content to an adult.
The mother said: ‘Always check your kids’ phones. Be aware.’
An NSPCC Scotland spokesman said: ‘The UK Government needs to urgently bring in laws which force social media platforms to make protecting children a priority.’
‘Always check your kids’ phones – be aware’