The case of Luis Sousa Rebelo (27) also marks the first time someone has been prosecuted in Jersey’s Royal Court for sexual touching without consent, which was made an offence in its own right following a recent overhaul of the Island’s sexual offences law. Previously it came under sexual assault.
Rebelo was sent to prison for a total of 3½ years after admitting two charges of sexual touching without consent, one of improper use of a public telecommunications system and one of making indecent photographs of children.
He was one of two men to be jailed yesterday by the Superior Number of the Royal Court, which sits only for the Island’s most serious cases.
Lucasz Przydanek (39), from Liverpool, was sent to prison for 7½ years for importing around £200,000 worth of drugs into Jersey in the spare wheel of a car he used for his work as an Uber driver.
Rebelo’s first charge related to an incident, committed at the start of this year, during which he forced his hands down the underwear of a woman he had just met that day after befriending her on Facebook and touched her despite her repeatedly telling him no.
Three days after being interviewed on suspicion of that offence, he slapped the bottom of a female stranger while she was talking to door staff outside a nightclub.
A further count related to his conduct on Facebook when he sent sexually explicit messages and pictures to a woman posing as a 14-year-old girl. A copy of the conversation was emailed to the States police in December last year.
And when his mobile phone was analysed following his arrest for that offence, they found 15 indecent images of children.
The images, the Superior Number of the Royal Court heard yesterday, were stored within the cache on his phone, which meant they had been intentionally clicked on via a website but not saved for future viewing.
All of the offences, the court was told by Advocate Sarah Dale, defending, were committed following a ‘very traumatic two years’ during which the defendant’s mother, Ana Rebelo, had been found dead at her home in Victoria Street.
His father, Alfredo Da Costa Rebelo, was found not guilty of his wife’s murder in February following a Royal Court trial. Yesterday, Mr Rebelo watched from the public gallery of the States Chamber, where the court sitting was being held while the Royal Court was in use, as his son was sent to prison.
The Crown had asked for a prison sentence of three years and nine months in total.
Giving the facts related to the first count, Crown Advocate Matthew Maletroit said Rebelo had befriended a woman on Facebook and the pair had agreed to meet. After chatting in the Millennium Town Park they went back to her home and sat in her bedroom.
Rebelo, the court heard, began pleasuring himself and then repeatedly attempted to touch the woman, who declined his advances and told him ‘no’, it was heard. He eventually managed to push his hands down her shorts and underwear and touch her, the court was told, before she pulled his hand away and told him to leave, which he did.
The court heard that assessments put Rebelo, who has previous convictions for non-sexual offences, at a ‘high risk of sexual reoffending’.
While handing down the court’s sentence, Commissioner Sir Michael Birt, who was presiding over the case, said: ‘The searches recorded on your phone show you have searched for sites which are suggestive of an interest in underage girls on your part.’
Earlier, the court had heard from Advocate Dale, who asked the court to take into account two important points.
One, she said, related to the fact that the indecent images had been within the memory of the phone and not saved for future viewing or sharing with others.
Secondly, she told the court her client had always believed that the person he was communicating with via Facebook in relation to the third charge was an adult.
She said photos on the person’s profile showing her with a tattoo in a date-stamped photo from four years ago, for example, showed she was not 14, as she had suggested.
The court was also told Rebelo, who was born in Portugal, had ‘limited self awareness’ and ‘a reduced ability to evaluate how his behaviour was perceived by others and the consequences of his behaviours’.
The court also ordered a restraining order be put in place protecting the first victim. Rebelo will remain on the Sex Offenders Register for at least eight years. A number of restrictive orders were also put in place, but details were not read to the court.
Jurats Anthony Olsen, Jerry Ramsden, Jane Ronge, Steven Austin-Vautier and David Hughes were sitting.
