Co Antrim paedo (54) who raped 14-year-old girl and got her pregnant is jailed

Ioan Pasula (54) will spend half of his three-year sentence in jail and half under supervised licence. He has also been ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for life and was given a 10-year sexual offences prevention order.

At Antrim Crown Court, Judge Alistair Devlin said while the teenager had not co-operated with the police or prosecution, the case against Pasula was “overwhelming”, outlining that DNA evidence proved he was “136,000 times more likely to be the father of the child” than someone the teen claimed was the dad.

Pasula, with an address in Ballymena but now c/o Maghaberry prison, had previously admitted a single count of sexual activity involving penetration with a child aged 13-16 on a date between June 2020 and June 2021.

Judge Devlin outlined how the schoolgirl told police her baby’s father was a 19 year-old who had left the country, “but that was not accepted”.

Mother and baby were taken into care and it was when her foster mum overheard her engaging in “sexualised conversations” that police enquiries lead them to Pasula.

Arrested and interviewed last February, Pasula refused to answer questions even when the DNA evidence was put to him.

It’s also not the first time that Pasula has stood in the dock facing sex offences.

Judge Devlin revealed that in 1999, in his native Romania, 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 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 Pasula.