Tourist guilty of ‘grooming’ given seven-month prison sentence

Thursday 30 August 2018

A 56-year-old man who’d come over to the island for "a short break" has been sent to prison after admitting grooming following an online exchange with a local mother he believed to be a teenage boy.

Robert Connell is the latest digital "predator" to have been caught by self-styled "paedophile hunter" Cheyenne O'Connor.

The court was told that Connell, who was staying at the Grand Hotel, struck up a ‘conversation’ with a fictitious 14-year-old ‘boy’ - in fact, Ms O'Connor - on gay dating app Grindr.

In the conversation, the fictitious boy asked Connell, "What do you want?”

Pictured: Connell was found following the efforts of local vigilante and mother, Cheyenne O'Connor.

Connell’s reply was sexually explicit, and he asked the ‘boy’ “if it was his first time”. The ‘boy’ later asked if it would be "painful."

The two agreed to meet in the early afternoon in front of the hotel by the ticket kiosk for the DUWKs that run from West Park Beach to Elizabeth Castle. Plain-clothed police officers were lying in wait, but no body matching the image Connell had sent the ‘boy’ turned up. Connell was in fact watching from the hotel terrace.

Having noticed the ‘boy’ hadn’t turned up, Connell sent him another message asking what had happened. Police arrested Connell at the hotel.

He told officers he had no idea the ‘boy’ was 14, because he hadn’t been paying attention; that he looked much older in the picture he’d sent him; and that he had no sexual interest in young boys. He also said he’d had no intention of actually meeting the boy or going through with any of the sexually activity he’d described.

Pictured: Passing sentence Relief Magistrate Nuno Santos-Costa told Connell his guilty plea wasn't consistent with the claim he never intended meeting the 'boy'.

Passing sentence, Relief Magistrate Nuno Santos-Costa said ‘grooming’ was a very serious offence and that the court had “a duty to protect the young and vulnerable from predators”.

He also noted Connell’s guilty plea wasn’t consistent with his defence – that he had no intention of meeting the ‘boy’. A custodial sentence was therefore inevitable.

Ms O'Connor posted on 'Unknown Jersey' - a Facebook page she runs to inform members of the public about her efforts - following the sentencing. Some islanders commented on the post that Connell should have received a longer sentence.

Despite Ms O'Connor's success in snaring the groomer, Police have previously warned against vigilante justice.

In a statement released earlier this year, they said that, while they understand the public’s desire to protect children, those who take the law into their own hands to entrap civilians in this way are likely to produce evidence of “low” quality and could even undermine existing undercover police investigations. 

“Techniques used by vigilantes may not always be acceptable police investigative tactics and in some cases may involve criminality. There is also an absence of any governance or control for their actions nor any way of safeguarding child victims. There is no way of controlling the risk that vigilante activity might disrupt covert law enforcement activity, given that both will seek to target the same types of offender,” officers explained.

“It is for these reasons we don’t condone this activity or work with vigilante groups, but if evidence is handed to us, we will act on that.”