March 2018

Repeat paedophile locked up for five years

A 67-year-old man has been jailed by Guernsey’s Royal Court, after being found guilty of five separate sexual offences against a young girl.

Christopher Ogier was sentenced to a total of five years for the offences on the female minor, to run concurrently from 15 May 2017, which is when he was first remanded in to custody.

The five separate sexual offences which he was jailed for took place over two years between 2014 and 2016, when the victim was under 13 years of age.

The offences included; indecent assault, gross indecency and incitement to commit acts of gross indecency.

Ogier had been jailed for a similar offence of indecent assault against a young girl in November 2016, which had taken place after these offences.

He said she was lying, claiming that the victim had made up the stories as she had only come forward after he was jailed for the separate offence.

Guernsey’s Royal Court heard the victim had “bottled the incidents up” and that it was “the worst thing she had ever experienced in her life.”

In sentencing Judge Russell Finch told Ogier: “This was grooming, and repeat offences show ‘moral corruption’, the worst thing is your continued denial; which is disturbing.”

Ogier’s not guilty plea meant the victim had to go through a trial and give evidence.

A victim impact report found that the victim had been greatly affected by the trial and whilst she had been slightly relieved by the guilty verdict she would never feel comfortable around older men.

Continuing summing up, Judge Finch said: “What you did was a wicked exploitation of a young girl at a young age.”

Ogier was given three years and three months in prison for the most serious indecent assault charge, and was sentenced to a total of five years in prison taking into account each of the other sexual offences including a further count of indecent assault.

Along with the five years he must spend in jail, Ogier was given a further five years extended sentence and a 10 year notification period.

November 2014

‘Callous and wicked’ paedophile jailed for nine-and-a-half years

‘Callous’ and ‘wicked’ was how a Royal Court judge described a paedophile sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison yesterday.

Judge Russell Finch also condemned Nick Finigan, 45, pictured, who indecently assaulted two children 15 years ago, for forcing his victims to give evidence in the trial after he pleaded not guilty.

‘You have robbed them of their entitlement to a normal young life but justice has slowly, surely and properly caught up with you,’ he said.

He added the electrician’s probation report had painted ‘a disturbing picture of a person lacking insight and remorse’.

Judge Finch said it had noted how Finigan had sought to ‘weasel his way out’ of previous convictions for possessing indecent images of children and indecently assaulting a girl – despite the fact he had pleaded guilty to these offences in 2003.

It also showed he viewed the guilty verdict at last month’s trial as a ‘miscarriage of justice’.

Judge Finch said, because of this, Finigan continued to pose a risk to children.

September 2003

Paedophiles should get longer sentences’

A mother whose 15-year-old daughter was asked for sex by a paedophile has criticised his lenient prison sentence.

Nicholas Finigan was jailed for six months, but the girl’s mother said his pretence to be a woman when he made contact with the girl via the Internet should have brought a stronger sentence.

‘I want to warn parents to keep an eye on who their kids are talking to online and advise them not to go to meet them and not to give out addresses or mobile phone numbers,’ she said. ‘You just don’t know what is going to happen.

Most of the time you think you are speaking to someone innocent, but you are not always.’

Finigan, 33, a self-employed electrician, who lived in St Peter Port was sentenced to three months in jail for indecently assaulting the girl.

He received a consecutive three-month sentence for distributing indecent photographs.

Possessing them also cost him £3,000. He sent to the teenager wedding photos of an unknown woman pretending they were of him. ‘It started when she was 15.

They met through an AOL chat room, where you can find out if the person is from Guernsey, and my daughter thought it was a female,’ said the mother.

‘They swapped text messages with funny jokes a few times.’ Finigan knew what she looked like and where she lived.

One day the 15-year-old girl went to the Bridge where she received a text message on her mobile phone saying, ‘I can see you and I’m watching you’. ‘She looked round and could not see a women who looked like the picture on the Internet.

As she was walking back along the Bridge, some guy poked his head out of a car window and commented on her stripy socks,’ said the mother.

‘He introduced himself and said he was sorry but he did not trust people in Guernsey, which is why he pretended he was a woman,’ she said.

‘Like an idiot, she got in his car. They went for a spin and then he went to drop her off at her dad’s. That is when he put his hand on her knee and asked if she wanted sex.’

Her daughter said ‘no’, got out of the car and left, but failed to tell anybody about the incident, thinking that was the end of it.

‘Then he started texting her for a few weeks afterwards asking her if she wanted sex and whether she was into older men. She kept texting him back to tell him to leave her alone,’ said the mother.

Months later, the mother had a phone call from a child protection officer because police had found a good photo of her daughter on Finigan’s computer.

The mother said that the incident had had an effect on her daughter. ‘She has been really stressed out but some of this lifted when he was convicted.’

The girl is also worried about what might happen on Finigan’s release early next year. ‘I can foresee vigilante action against paedophiles if tougher sentences are not imposed,’ said the mother.

She claimed that her daughter’s case was only the tip of the iceberg in Guernsey and that there were many paedophiles walking around the island. Police declined to comment.

March 2019

Man jailed for ‘inciting gross indecency’ with a child

A man has been sentenced to 10 months in prison for attempting to incite gross indecency with a child in Guernsey.

52-year-old Mike Pepperell used a dating app to sent explicit messages to who he thought was a 14-year-old boy.

Pepperell was messaging the boy through Grindr – a social media network aimed at gay, bisexual and transgender people.

In a case that’s the first of its kind in the Bailiwick, Mr Pepperell’s messages were sent to Jersey-based paedophile hunter Cheyenne O’Connor, who was posing as the teenager.

The explicit content of the messages was described as ‘deplorable’ by Judge Russel Finch.

He said that despite no prior convictions and his “good character”, Mr Pepperell clearly attempted to encourage a young boy to come to Guernsey to engage in sexual activity.

He’s been sentenced to 10 months in prison with an extended two-year license after release.