A 62-year-old Springfield man who made his living blowing bubbles for children at community events now sits in a Lane County jail cell, accused of sodomizing and sexually abusing kids — and the institutions that handed him access never bothered to ask the obvious questions.
Patrick Corey O'Neill was arraigned June 24 on two counts of first-degree sodomy, one count of first-degree sexual penetration, and four counts of first-degree sex abuse, according to court documents reported by the Eugene Register-Guard. The two alleged victims were under the age of 14. Authorities say O'Neill subjected them to both oral and anal intercourse and inappropriately touched them.
O'Neill wasn't lurking in the shadows. He was a known "bubble" performer in Eugene and Springfield who engaged with children on a regular basis at parks and the Oregon Country Fair. He also babysat for different families, according to Springfield police. That's not a side gig — that's open, repeated, unsupervised access to other people's children, handed over without apparent hesitation.
Springfield police arrested O'Neill on June 23 after receiving reports alleging sexual abuse involving two young juveniles. A pretrial conference is scheduled for July 29 at the Lane County Courthouse. Police are asking anyone with information about O'Neill's contact with children to come forward.
The pattern is familiar and it keeps repeating: predators seek positions that put them near children, and the adults running those venues, events, and family arrangements look the other way or simply fail to vet. The Register-Guard reported the charges and O'Neill's community role straightforwardly. The AP and U.S. News & World Report, meanwhile, covered a separate but structurally similar institutional failure this week — a former Colorado coroner and his brother charged with 125 counts of abuse of a corpse after decomposing bodies were found behind a hidden door in their funeral home. Former Pueblo County Coroner Brian Lee Cotter allegedly told inspectors he may have given fake ashes to grieving families. Colorado, it turns out, had some of the weakest funeral home oversight in the nation — no routine inspections, no qualifications required for operators. The state only adopted inspection rules in 2024 after nearly 200 decomposing bodies were found at room temperature in a Penrose funeral home. The Cotter brothers' mortuary was the first inspected under the new rules.
Different institutions, same root failure: zero accountability until somebody gets caught. In Oregon, a man with regular access to children faced no apparent screening. In Colorado, a coroner entrusted with the dead allegedly cashed in on that trust for years while regulators did nothing.
The question isn't just what O'Neill allegedly did. It's who handed him the keys — and why nobody thought to check.
