Paedophile hunter Cheyenne O’Connor – whose online investigations have led to 12 successful convictions in Jersey – has regularly criticised the sentences handed down to those found guilty of child abuse.
A petition she launched using the States e-petitions service has gathered more than 1,000 signatures – meaning it will receive a response from Home Affairs Minister Len Norman.
All petitions are given six months to attract as many signatures as possible, with those surpassing 1,000 triggering a response from the relevant minister. Those that pass the 5,000 mark are tabled for a States debate. Miss O’Connor’s petition went live on Friday.
The mother-of-two is also planning on staging a protest in the Royal Square at 10 am on Saturday 16 February and is calling on Islanders to attend to make their views heard.
Miss O’Connor poses as a young child online in order to snare offenders, saving transcripts of online conversations on dating websites with the men, and often takes pictures of the suspect covertly when they attempt to meet the ‘child’. Her evidence is then passed to the States police.
On the petition, she said: ‘The people of Jersey are sick and tired of seeing paedophiles either found guilty of abusing, or attempting to abuse, our children [and] being handed lenient prison sentences – if any prison sentence – by the Jersey courts.
‘We therefore demand the States of Jersey implement mandatory minimum prison terms for such offences, starting from a minimum of three years and change the signing of the Sex Offenders Register to life.
‘This is the only way we can deter paedophiles from harming our children and partaking in the vile downloading of indecent images and videos of children online.’
The States agreed to overhaul the Sexual Offences Law in September, which increased the maximum sentences for certain offences.
