A CONVICTED criminal from the UK who found work in Jersey as a cleaner and immediately stole from customers’ houses has been jailed for two years and two months.
Channing Tornerup got a job cleaning homes just after arriving in the Island on 27 March this year, the Royal Court heard yesterday.
And within days the 41-year-old had stolen from three different properties, taking cash and jewellery worth £7,700.
His crimes were described by the Lieutenant-Bailiff as motivated by ‘pure greed’.
Crown Advocate Lauren Hallam, prosecuting, said Tornerup, who is originally from Mold in north Wales, had been living in Wigan and came to Jersey to look for work.
He was offered a job with a cleaning firm and stole from the second house he visited.
Advocate Hallam said: ‘The owner found the cleaning had been done to a poor standard, and some drawers were left slightly open.’
She later discovered that £300, 250 euros and a wallet had been stolen.
In another house a woman found that £90 had been taken from her bag and that two watches belonging to her husband and three rings were missing.
In a third property, Tornerup stole £145 and a man’s signet ring that had been a present from his mother.
Messages found on the defendant’s phone showed he had been trying to sell the rings and watches.
All of them were recovered.
Tornerup was arrested and in the Magistrate’s Court on 4 April he pleaded not guilty to four charges of larceny, only changing his plea to guilty at a further court appearance in June before a trial was due to begin.
His previous convictions included two of assaulting a woman in Wigan in May of last year.
Advocate Hallam recommended a sentence of two years and two months.
Advocate Allana Binnie, defending, said Tornerup accepted he was facing a prison sentence but had been having serious difficulties in his personal life and suffering from stress and anxiety.
She said: ‘My client was deeply struggling with the breakdown of his relationship and loss of contact with his son. He came to Jersey for a fresh start.
‘He wanted to prove to his family that he could do well for himself. That desire to impress overtook logic.’
She added: ‘The offences were unsophisticated offences, unplanned, and initially opportunistic.
‘He has written a genuine and well-considered letter of remorse. He recognises there was a breach of trust here.’
But the Jurats agreed to the sentence requested by the prosecution.
Lieutenant-Bailiff Anthony Olsen said the severity of the crimes lay not solely in the monetary or sentimental value of the items stolen, though they were important.
He told Tornerup: ‘What lies at the heart of your offences is the breach of the trust that was reposed in you. There is trust between a homeowner and a cleaner and you breached it.’
He suggested his crime was worse than burglary, saying: ‘There is no relationship between a burglar and his victim. There is no trust to breach.
‘This was pure greed.’
And he disputed Tornerup’s claim in his letter of remorse that he had not meant to cause distress to his victims, asking: ‘How can they possibly fail to be distressed?’
Jurats Robert Christensen and Kim Averty were sitting.
Following the sentencing, Detective Constable Juliette Morris said: ‘This offence demonstrates a blatant breach of trust and dishonest behaviour from Tornerup.
‘He was employed in good faith to carry out this work but clearly couldn’t resist helping himself to property that didn’t belong to him.’
