A man who passed himself off as a Hare Krishna 'guru' has been sentenced to 19 years in jail for repeatedly raping three teenage girls he turned into mesmerised sex slaves. Sean O'Neil, an Australian 43-year-old computer programmer, was found guilty of multiple rape and of corrupting minors by a closed-door appeals court in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence on Monday. O'Neil forced a total of four teenage girls to live as naked slaves in his French Riviera apartment in the town of Valbonne, where he subjected them to pornographic photo sessions and made them recite the Hare Krishna mantra 1,700 times a day. Sean O'Neil, an Australian 43-year-old computer programmer, was sentenced to 19 years in jail after being found guilty of multiple rape and of corrupting minors on Monday . The three girls he regularly raped between 2009 and 2010 while they were aged around 15 and made psychologically dependent on the Australian. The court rejected O'Neil's argument that the sex was consensual to confirm a lower court's October 2013 conviction, and to lengthen an original sentence of 15 years in prison. It also barred him from re-entering France once he had served his time. O'Neil forced a total of four teenage girls to live as naked slaves in his French Riviera apartment in the town of Valbonne, where he subjected them to pornographic photo sessions . One expert testified that the girls cooperated because they were in a trance-like state approaching 'hypnosis'. The victims described O'Neil as a 'guru' who urged them to recruit other young virgins of the same age with the aim of starting a commune in Australia. The crimes came to light in 2010 after one of the girls described what they were enduring to a school employee.
Sean O'Neil was found guilty of multiple rape and of corrupting minors . He was sentenced to 19 years in prison at a French court on Monday . O'Neil subjected the teenagers to pornographic photo sessions and made them recite the Hare Krishna mantra 1,700 times a day . One expert said the girls cooperated because they were in a trance-like state approaching 'hypnosis'