October 2014

Vicar jailed after telling 13-year-old girl to rape sister in on-line chat

A Church of England vicar told a 13-year-old girl to sexually abuse her 9-year-old sister during a series of depraved online chats.

Reverend James Ogley, a married father of two young children, told the teenager he wanted her and her sister to have sex with their own mother.

In another shocking online exchange, he told the teenager to rape her younger sibling.

Police officers discovered the clergyman’s warped communications when they went to the vicarage in Luton, Beds., where he lived with his family and seized his laptop computer from his study.

Ogley had been a regular visitor to the chat room for youngsters, deriving sexual gratification from the chat logs, a court was told.

Prosecutor Daniel Siong said: “The material included graphic descriptions of sexual abuse of children… these included incestuous, sadistic, paedophiliac sexual acts on young and very young children – four years old in one instance.”

In some exchanges he asked a 13-year-old girl to remove her clothes and sexually abuse her younger sister. Another interaction recorded him describing sex acts with an eight-year-old boy.

At Luton Crown Court, 38-year-old Ogley, the vicar of Saint Francis Church in Carteret Road, Luton, pleaded guilty to seven charges of publishing obscene material in the form of chat logs.

Six offences relate to material posted online in June 2012 and one to a publication in November 2012.

Ogley, who had been suspended from his post since his arrest, was jailed for two years.

Passing sentence Judge David Farrell QC told him:”What you did was totally incompatible with the beliefs and teachings of a vicar. You are there to uphold and further Christian beliefs.”

The court was told he had lost everything following his fall from grace. His marriage had fallen apart, he had lost his home and now he would be dismissed from the church.

Daniel Siong prosecuting said it was on January 10 last year that officers went to the vicarage in Hollybush Road, Luton where Ogley had lived with his young family since August 2011.

The court was told the officers from Hertfordshire Police’s County Community Safety Unit had gone to Ogley’s home because they had received ‘intelligence’ that someone at the address had been attempting to contact children via the chat room ‘Internet Relay Chat’ and asking them to “commit child sex offences.”

The vicar said he had not visited the chat forum for ‘some time’, while his wife said she had not used the chat room not since university.

But after officers were provided with a password to his laptop, chat logs were discovered that showed he had been having sexually explicit online conversations with youngsters who appeared to be under the age of 16.

The prosecutor said “The material included graphic descriptions of sexual abuse of children. These included incestuous, sadistic, paedophiliac sexual acts on young and very young children – four years old in one instance.”

Judge David Farrell QC, hearing the case, was told how Ogley had talked online of performing sex acts with an 8-year-old boy, discussed his penis size with a young girl and told her to remove her clothing.

In other online conversations with the same girl, who he believed to be 13, he had told her to perform sex acts on herself and expose herself from her bedroom window.

Ogley himself had pretended to be a youngster and on one occasion during a conversation claimed he was a 14-year-old boy from Ireland.

When interviewed by detectives, Ogley admitted he had been sexually aroused while having the online conversations, but he said he had never arranged to meet anyone.

The court was told that it hadn’t been possible for police to trace the people Ogley had spoken to in the chatroom.

The court was told that Ogley now accepts his sexual feelings are unhealthy and he has taken steps himself to tackle them with regular therapy sessions provided by the church.

Andrew Morton, defending, said: “He is a very chastened and contrite individual since his arrest. He is likely to lose his job and his home.

“He makes no excuses and realises the folly of his conduct and he is utterly mortified at having to read the stuff he wrote on the chatlines.”

In a statement, the Diocese said: “Bishop of St Albans, the Rt Revd Dr Alan Smith… will impose an appropriate penalty after sentencing.

“He will take account of what he sees as the gravity of this case and the breach of the trust reposed in Ogley by the church and by the parishioners of St Francis Luton.”