Mother-of-two Cheyenne O’Connor, whose online detective work has snared two dozen sex offenders, has said victims were reluctant to come forward after the Royal Court recently ruled that the identity of a man, jailed for downloading indecent images of children and who was applying to be removed from the Sex Offenders Register, should be protected.
Miss O’Connor, who has twice been nominated for a Pride of Jersey Award for her work exposing sex offenders, has said that the judgment showed that Jersey had learnt nothing since the release of the Independent Jersey Care Inquiry in 2017.
In court documents, the defendant’s application to be taken off the Sex Offenders Register was rejected because of concerns that the applicant maintains he downloaded the images simply to ‘identify victims of abuse’ and that he refused treatment in prison. The man also has two earlier convictions for sexual offences for which he served short custodial terms.
Addressing the point as to whether the defendant should be kept anonymous, the court found that original publicity about the applicant’s offending ‘created difficulties for himself and his wife’ and raised concerns about vigilantism.
It is the second case this year in which a convicted offender has been unnamed in court documents.
Miss O’Connor said: ‘In both cases they denied their crimes. The court have said they are “untreated” sex offenders.
‘It is obviously in the public interest for them to be named.
‘He is still a danger – he hasn’t owned up to his crimes. How is it that a sex offender, who is still a real risk to someone, is kept out of the public domain? It looks like they [the court] are protecting paedophiles – that is how people see it.’
She added that the rulings had prevented victims of sexual abuse from coming forward.
‘Victims have seen this and thought “what’s the point?” – it’s made them not want to come forward.
‘We haven’t moved on at all [from the inquiry]. They are protecting those committing the crimes.’
