The Ballymena Paedophile, Ioan Pasula (56), spent half of his three-year sentence in incarceration and the remainder under supervised release. He has been mandated to register as a sex offender for life and has received a 10-year sexual offences prevention order.
At Antrim Crown Court, in 2023, Judge Alistair Devlin stated that although the teenager had not cooperated with law enforcement or the prosecution, the evidence against Ioan Pasula was “overwhelming,” emphasising that DNA evidence indicated he was “136,000 times more likely to be the father of the child” than the individual the teenager identified as the father.
Ioan Pasula, residing in Ballymena but currently at Maghaberry prison, had previously confessed to one count of engaging in sexual activity involving penetration with a child aged 13-16 over the period from June 2020 to June 2021.
Judge Devlin delineated that the teenager informed the police her baby’s father was a 19-year-old who had departed the country, “but that was not acknowledged.”
The mother and infant were placed in protective custody, and it was upon her foster mother’s eavesdropping of “sexualised conversations” that police investigations directed them to Pasula.
Ioan Pasula, arrested and interrogated in February, declined to respond to enquiries despite the presentation of DNA evidence.
This is not Ioan Pasula’s first appearance in court for sex offences.
Judge Devlin revealed that in 1999, in his native Romania, Ioan Pasula was jailed for six years for offences translated as “sexual perversion committed against a person not yet 15”.
In that case, the judge told the court how Ioan Pasula forced an 11-year-old girl to perform sex acts on multiple occasions.
On what was taken into account for sentencing, Judge Devlin said the huge age gap was an aggravating feature, as was the fact that he had unprotected sex with the injured party and his previous conviction.
“Of considerable concern is the fact that you don’t appear to recognise that your offending is sexual abuse,” the judge told Ioan Pasula.
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