Cheyenne O’Connor, who has snared paedophiles online by posing as under-age boys and girls, has warned that Jersey ‘could become a place of choice’ for those intending to carry out child sex crimes and has called on the government to review its sentencing guidelines.
The 25-year-old mother-of-two made the comments after a tourist appeared in court last week to plead guilty to trying to meet a child following sexual grooming. Robert Connell, from Kent, who was arrested after speaking to Miss O’Connor online while believing she was a 14-year-old boy, has been warned he could be jailed after admitting the charge.
According to the Sexual Offences (Jersey) Law 2018, anyone who is convicted of sexual grooming and has intentionally met their alleged victim could face up to ten years in prison and a fine – the same jail term can be imposed in the UK.
Meanwhile, according to the same law, anyone who communicates with someone under 16 for sexual gratification faces up to five years in prison and a fine. In the UK, however, the same offence carries a maximum penalty of two years.
However, Ms O’Connor, who has been nominated for a Pride of Jersey Award in the community champion category, said she thought that although the courts had the power to hand down tougher sentences, often those that were being given out were too low.
‘I think for a standard first-time sentence [to meet a child for a sexual purpose] it should be two years [in prison] and if you are a repeat offender it should be five,’ she said.
‘If someone got a two-year sentence for a first-time offence, who would do it again?’
The St Helier resident, who has also helped snare offenders in England and is due to give evidence in a Scottish trial, said more needed to be done to deter potential offenders from committing child sex crimes in Jersey.
‘People are too scared to bring drugs into the Island because they know they could get a ten-year sentence, but if you try to meet a child to have sex with them you often only get six months in jail,’ she said. ‘Jersey is just too soft.’
In March, a 41-year-old man was sentenced to seven months in jail, placed on the Sex Offenders Register for five years and given a five-year restraining order after trying to meet a 13-year-old boy on gay dating app Grindr who was in fact Ms O’Connor.
At the time the man, who is deaf, had his sentenced reduced by two months because of his disability.
Ms O’Connor, who often attends court to see the people she has helped to convict being sentenced, disagreed with the reduction.
Across the world, so-called paedophile-hunters work in teams to pose as minors on dating apps and chat rooms before arranging to meet alleged offenders to confront them about the meeting they have arranged. The meetings are often recorded or streamed on social media and some have been viewed thousands of times.
Asked if she had considered working with others or if she would ever record her interactions with alleged offenders, Ms O’Connor said: ‘I do not think there is any point in going live on Facebook and getting a team together. With Jersey being so small, there would be 100 people there in five minutes all wanting to attack a paedophile, which I do not think would be the smartest move.
‘I do not think that I need help, as I know what needs to be done and I do not want someone messing up the whole case.’
Ms O’Connor added that she had no intention of stopping in the near future and was currently speaking to four different people online.
She also said that four people she had spoken to had been charged and were currently being dealt with by the courts.
