When Stephanie Ng woke to the sound of seagulls circling overhead and waves crashing on rocks beside her, she thought she was dreaming.

But as she came to, wet and freezing, she realised with dawning horror she was lying by the sea in a pool of her own blood, her throat slashed.

Please log in or register with Independent.ie for free access to this article.

Log In

New to Independent.ie? Create an account

This was no dream, but a waking nightmare that had begun with an encounter with a teenage boy on a social media app. Ms Ng (25) only later learned her attacker – who had lured her to the Dún Laoghaire seafront for a selfie before trying to knife her to death – was just 15 years old.

She struggled to understand how someone that age could have “such evil intentions”.

The boy, now 17, was given an 11-year sentence at the Central Criminal Court yesterday after experts also sought to probe what might have triggered his descent into violence.

Mr Justice Michael White said while the boy had been suffering from a serious mental illness leading up to the crime, it fell short of the legal definition of insanity.

The accused pleaded guilty to attempting to murder Ms Ng at Queen’s Road, Dún Laoghaire, on December 23, 2017.

Judge White backdated the sentence to December 26, 2017, when the boy was first arrested, and said it would be reviewed after five years, in 2023.

The boy will remain at Oberstown detention centre until he is 18, when he will be transferred to an adult prison.

Garda Daniel Treacy had told the court the boy pretended he was 19 when he first met Ms Ng on the Whisper app.

She made it clear she was not interested in a sexual relationship and they arranged to meet in person.

At his suggestion, they went to the water’s edge for a selfie. Ms Ng was facing out to sea when the accused put her in a neck lock and choked her with one hand, a knife in the other.

She tried to grab the blade, suffering cuts while he calmly told her to stop screaming.

After the attack, she managed to stagger a few steps away from the shore but when she tried to call for help, no sound came – her throat had been cut 75pc into her windpipe.

She collapsed on a path and was saved by passers-by.

Ms Ng recalled taking “what I thought was going to be my last breath as he choked the life out of me”.

Her scars, including a stab wound to her hand, would always be a reminder of the boy’s “demonic actions”.

When the accused was arrested at his home on Christmas Day, gardaí seized a book of drawings that included a sketch showing someone being cut up with a knife.

Psychiatric and psychological reports were ordered ahead of sentencing.

Forensic psychiatrist Dr Richard Church said the accused had had unsupervised access to extreme pornography from a young age, unknown contact with the dark web, and posed an ongoing risk to others that had “the potential to be life-changing or fatal”.

His parents said he was bullied by exclusion at school and was depressed. The boy had spent hours every day playing video games, including military simulation games.

He said in interview he had watched online pornography since the age of 11 or 12.

He said from around 2015, he had persistent, intrusive thoughts of hitting people and hurting them.

Though his only prior physical confrontation was a scuffle with another boy, he had made plans to capture and kill a squirrel.

When he met Ms Ng, he “had a voice in my head saying: ‘You have to do this’, so I attacked,” he said.

“I got out the knife. I choked her and cut into her neck,” he admitted.

The teenager said that he was shaking afterwards, but didn’t really feel anything.

He was surprised she had survived, and happy “because it meant I wasn’t a murderer”.

The boy said he now regretted his actions and said what he had done was “cruel, demonic and evil”.

His parents told Dr Church when the attack happened it was the first time he had been let out on his own in months and they thought he was better.

The boy’s mother, who apologised to the victim, told the court she had felt something terrible was going to happen due to her son’s mental state.

She said her son started to become “unwell” when he was 13, suffered depression and began to hear voices in his head telling him to hurt himself or others.

He needed urgent in-patient psychiatric care but no place was available and he was prescribed increasing doses of anti-depressants which his mother believed might explain his actions. He was put on anti-psychotic drugs after his arrest and the voices he was hearing stopped, she said.

However, Dr Church had said it was not clear if anti-depressants had any influence on the offence.

A psychologist’s report stated the boy demonstrated traits of egocentricity, had fantasies of power, control and dominance and had shown a failure to fully accept responsibility for his actions.

Judge White said it was a crime of the “utmost seriousness” and the boy had contacted Ms Ng on social media “for the purpose of causing harm”.

“There was planning, there was pre-meditation,” he said, and a “determined strategy on meeting Ms Ng”, who he enticed to an isolated location.

There was “cold calculation without empathy in the carrying out of the violent act”.

It was clear Ms Ng was a “gentle person” and the attack had affected her emotionally in a “life changing” way.

In mitigation, the boy pleaded guilty early, expressed remorse and was of previous good character.

He was from a very loving and dedicated family who had been “exemplary in their care for him”, he said.

The judge noted that Dr Church’s report was based on one consultation and the court had been “hampered” in properly exploring these issues because consent to furnish the boy’s treating psychiatrist’s notes had been withheld by his parents.

It was then that Dr Church’s report had been obtained by court order.

His prognosis had been “uncertain” but he had serious concerns for the boy’s future and prospects of re-offending, the judge said.

The boy sat in the dock between his parents throughout the hearing, watching impassively. He did not react when the sentence was handed down and his mother and father hugged him before he was led away.

Source: Read Full Article