A FORMER Guernsey Chief Minister appeared in court today charged with possessing more than 1,400 indecent images of children.
Deputy Jonathan Le Tocq, who held the top job in Guernsey politics from 2014 to 2016, was arrested on 21 July and subsequently charged.
He appeared at Guernsey Magistrate’s Court this afternoon and after a brief hearing, in which he spoke only to confirm his name and address, was remanded in custody for four weeks.
The charges related to 80 images classified as Category A – the most serious – with 150 Category B and 1,200 Category C images also recorded as having been made between June 2023 and July of this year. He was also charged with using two social media accounts on X (formerly Twitter), to send indecent images and messages.
An ordained Christian minister who has spent more than two decades as senior pastor at the Church on the Rock in the northern parish of St Sampson, Deputy Le Tocq (61) was first elected to Guernsey’s States of Deliberation in 2000, serving for two terms and then being re-elected in 2012 after a four-year break from politics.
Since being unsuccessful in a bid to remain as Chief Minister after the 2016 election, Deputy Le Tocq served as External Relations Minister for nine years.
He was re-elected to the States at the election held in June of this year, ranking ninth of the 82 candidates in terms of votes received. He subsequently stood again as Chief Minister, but received only seven of the 40 votes cast in the three-way contest as Deputy Lyndsay de Sausmarez was elected after gaining 22 votes.
