A Warminster man who used AI to create graphic, deepfake pornographic images of his underage neighbor, and who stole underwear from that girl’s bedroom after police seized his cache of child porn, was sentenced to state prison Wednesday.
Stephen O’Neill, 47, tearfully apologized to the girl’s parents, who trembled under the effort of holding back their grief and rage, before Bucks County Court Judge Stephen Corr handed down his seven to 10-year sentence.
Earlier this year, O’Neill pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography in connection with nearly 700 pictures and videos detectives discovered on his cell phone and tablet. He also pleaded guilty to theft. Those photos, prosecutors said Wednesday, included violent depictions of children, some as young as toddlers, being raped.
In sentencing O’Neill, Corr said the case was extremely disturbing to him, and called O’Neill’s behavior “some of the most predatory conduct” he had ever seen as a judge.
“You got caught, and the very next day stole her underwear and continued this perversion,” Corr said. “You were clearly under the threat of going to jail, and even still that didn’t stop you.”
O’Neill, in his statement to Corr, said he realizes his actions were “deviant, perverse and shameful.”
“I’m not an evil person, truly,” he said. “I never meant to harm anyone.”
Corr ruled that O’Neill is a sexually violent predator, a legal distinction that requires him to register for the rest of his life with the Pennsylvania State Police.
His attorney, Lisa Williams, said that O’Neill, who has struggled his whole life with addiction, was abusing Adderall at the time the offenses took place. While under the influence of the medication, he explored the dark web and “stumbled” upon child pornography.
The use of that medication also lowered his inhibitions, Williams said, and played a role in his creation of the deepfake images of his neighbor, as well as the theft of her underwear.
But First Assistant Kristen McElroy disputed that theory of the case. O’Neill consciously took steps to prey on a teenage girl he had known for years, she said, and did so solely for his personal, sexual gratification.
“His level of compulsion certainly implies and suggests that he was not in control of his actions, and it is scary what could have happened,” she said. “Obviously, it’s fortunate that law enforcement was so proactive in this case and moved so quickly that nothing further did happen to this child.”
Bucks County detectives began investigating O’Neill in June 2025, when they received five separate tips from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children that accounts belonging to O’Neill were uploading child pornography, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.
When detectives served a search warrant at his home, O’Neill asked them if they were “there for what is on [his] phone.”
While investigating the phone, detectives found the deepfake images he made of his teenage neighbor, some of which depicted the two of them having sex, prosecutors said.
O’Neill also authored what McElroy described as “graphic sexual novels” about him and the girl, in which he described his fantasies.
A day after the warrant was served, O’Neill was recorded on a nanny cam going into the girl’s home while she and her parents were on vacation and stealing a pair of her underwear.
Her father, speaking in court Wednesday, said he and his family’s lives have been “dismantled in ways we can’t describe.”
His daughter, he said, “lost the spark of innocence parents try to hard to protect.” The former straight-A student is struggling in school, on antidepressants and undergoing therapy as she struggles to deal with the trauma from O’Neill’s actions.
He implored Corr to sentence O’Neill to a lengthy prison term, to protect other children from him.
“This is not remorse,” he said. “This is a predator cornered, looking for a gap to slip through.
“We will not allow him to worm his way out of accountability.”