Jersey Unreported Judgments

Superior Number Sentencing - indecent images

[2022]JRC234

Royal Court

(Samedi)

1 November 2022

The Attorney General

-v-

Andrew Stephen Pallot

Sentencing by the Superior Number of the Royal Court, to which the accused was remanded by the Inferior Number on 15^th September, 2022, following a guilty plea to the following charges:

Age:  25. 

Plea: Guilty. 

Details of Offence:

In November 2021, the States of Jersey Police received intelligence that an internet user had uploaded a Category A and three Category B indecent images to the internet, and that they were in possession of Category A images.  The States of Jersey Police linked the information provided with the Defendant and his home address. 

A warrant was executed at the Defendant's home address and forty-six items capable of storing or accessing digital material were seized, including a OnePlus 7 Pro mobile phone.

The devices were submitted for examination to the Police Digital Forensics Unit and on the OnePlus 7 Pro mobile phone a total of 2,524 illegal images of children ("IIOC") were found (776 Category A, 946 Category B and 802 Category C).  The examination of the phone also showed that a total of 1,006 IIOC had been distributed via Telegram to thirteen individuals (418 Category A, 366 Category B and 218 Category C).

Details of Mitigation:

Guilty pleas, previous good character, cooperative with Police and made admissions in interview. 

Previous Convictions:

None. 

Conclusions:

Total:  4 years' imprisonment. 

Order sought under Article 5(1) of the Sex Offenders (Jersey) Law 2010 that a period of 10 years should elapse before the accused is permitted to apply to no longer be subject to the notification requirements to commence from date of sentence.

Restrictive Orders sought, to run from the date of sentence for a period of 7 years, under the Sex Offenders (Jersey) Law 2010 with the following conditions:

1.      That the Defendant be prohibited from:

(a) Living in the same household as any child under the age of 16 unless with the express approval of the Offender Management Unit of the States of Jersey Police;

(b) Contacting or attempting to contact, via any form of social media, internet or telecommunications system, any child he knows or believes to be under 16, unless there is a parent, guardian or responsible adult present who is over the age of 21, who is aware of the accused's convictions, and who does not have a conviction which would render him/her liable to notification under the Sex Offenders (Jersey) Law 2010;

(c) Being alone with any child under the age of 16 years, aside from such contact which is inadvertent or unavoidable. They will be considered to be alone if there is not a parent, guardian or responsible adult present who is over the age of 21, who is aware of the accused's convictions, and who does not have a conviction which would render him/her liable to notification under the Sex Offenders (Jersey) Law 2010.

(d) Owning or having in his possession or having access to any device capable of accessing the internet unless:

(i) It has the capacity to retain and display the history of internet use.

(ii) The Defendant ensures that such history is not deleted; and

(iii) That he register the device with the Offender Management Unit of the States of Jersey Police.

(e) Utilising any 'cloud' or similar remote storage media unless the Defendant declares such use (providing account details) to the police managing team in the area in which he resides and provide access to it on request for inspection by a member of the Offender Management Unit.

(f) Possessing any device capable of storing digital images unless the Defendant makes it available on request for inspection by a police officer or a member of the Offender Management Unit which shall include removal of the device in order to facilitate the inspection.

(g) Installing and/or using any electronic peer-to-peer file sharing program or website.

(h) Using software or hardware to encrypt or otherwise hide his IP address.

2.      That in circumstances where the Defendant finds himself alone with a child under the age of 16, or finds himself in contact with someone he knows or believes to be a child under the age of 16, that he has a positive duty to remove himself from that situation as soon as reasonably possible;

3.      That the Defendant cannot refuse access to police officers who are monitoring or checking on his restraining orders, and he must allow officers entry to any premises he occupies or is in control of for the purposes of searching for relevant devices.

4.      That the Defendant provide advance notification details of any proposed changes of address or employment that will have to be approved by the Offender Management Unit at the States of Jersey Police.

Forfeiture and destruction of the OnePlus 7 Pro mobile phone and other seized devices listed in the appendix document sought. 

Sentence and Observations of Court:

Total:  3 years' imprisonment. 

Ordered under Article 5(1) of the Sex Offenders (Jersey) Law 2010 that a period of 7 years should elapse before the accused is permitted to apply to no longer be subject to the notification requirements to commence from date of sentence.

Restrictive Orders made in terms sought, to run from the date of sentence for a period of 5 years, under the Sex Offenders (Jersey) Law 2010.

Forfeiture and destruction of the OnePlus 7 Pro mobile phone only ordered.

Ms L. B. Hallam, Crown Advocate.

Advocate S. E. A. Dale for the Defendant.

JUDGMENT

THE DEPUTY BAILIFF:

1.        Andrew Stephen Pallot you are 25 years old and fall to be sentenced for offences relating to the downloading and distribution of indecent images of children.  On 29^th November 2021 the police executed a warrant at the address which you shared with your parents.  The police had received intelligence that you had uploaded images to the internet and that you were in possession of such indecent images.  You were arrested and interviewed and made immediate admissions regarding your viewing and distribution of indecent images - you said that you knew that what you were doing was wrong.  You accepted not only downloading images but passing them on to others.  You said that you had sent between 100 and 200 indecent videos.  You also admitted creating an Instagram profile in the name of what purported to be a 15 year old boy which you used to chat to other young Instagram users, although on the evidence before us there is no suggestion that those conversations were either indecent or had the effect or intention of grooming young people.

2.        Various items capable of holding images were submitted for examination and your mobile telephone was found to hold a total of 2,524 images of which 776 were in the most serious Category A, 946 in Category B and 802 in Category C.  The images mainly related to boys aged between 6 and 14 years and the movies included videos of babies aged between 6 and 18 months.  The images included sexual activity between children and between children and adults.  The images were downloaded by you between April and November 2021.  The videos of which there were nearly 1200 were largely located in a peer-to-peer messaging application which you downloaded called Telegram - over 1000 indecent images were distributed by you.  1002 to thirteen individuals by Telegram which included both still images and videos and of the images that you distributed 412 were in Category A, 366 in Category B and 218 in Category C. 

3.        You entered guilty pleas before the Magistrate's Court at the first opportunity and accordingly you will receive full credit for those early pleas of guilty.  The Pre-Sentence Report says that you present a low risk of reconviction, but Dr Briggs says that the risk of your offending needs to be managed by way of intervention and he says that there is a risk of you reoffending sexually, the most likely scenario in which you would reoffend would be via some form of illegal online activity rather than the direct molestation of children.  The most likely motivation for such offending would be you achieving a sense of community associated with like minded individuals with the same deviant sexual interest that you certainly had last year.  The harm presented by such offending would be that you would contribute to an industry which exploits and damages children as we hope you by now understand that this sort of offending does. 

4.        You have no previous convictions and you are a man of previous good character.  However, as observed in other cases of offending of this nature, previous good character amounts to little mitigation.  Many offenders who commit this sort of offence are of previous good character.  We do though take into account the number of very positive references submitted to the Court on your behalf.  You are described as polite, kind, warm hearted, friendly, charitable generous hard working and loyal and we accept those descriptions of you.  We accept that you are embarrassed about what you have done and are remorseful for it.  It appears you now have an insight into your offending which you certainly did not have when you were committing these offences and we note from your letter to the Court that since your arrest you have attended therapy and peer support sessions, you have invested time in order to address and understand your offending behaviour and that has included attending sessions with Jersey Talking Therapies, Orchard House and of course Dr Briggs and that has been on a voluntary basis and we accept that you have worked on methods to understand and minimise your risk of further offending. 

5.        Having regard to the leading case of AG v Godson and Crowley [2013] (2) JLR 1 we note that the initial figure for the offences at Count 1 and Count 4 on the Indictment is 3 years' imprisonment as these are Category 4 offences as set out in Godson and Crowley.  We note that such initial figure needs to be adjusted by the Court to reflect such aggravating and mitigating factors of the offence as there may be and the resulting figure may be subject to a discount to reflect personal mitigation and a guilty plea.  We note that the initial figure already takes into account the fact that you have no relevant previous convictions so any personal mitigation needs to go beyond mere absence of previous convictions.

6.        Having regard to the circumstances of this case we have identified the following aggravating features which must impact the initial figure of 3 years in relation to Counts 1 and 4.  Those are firstly the number of indecent images, any number of images above 100 is a large amount and in this case there were over 2,500 indecent images of which over 750 were in Category A.  The second aggravating feature is the fact that you distributed (Count 4) indecent images and videos including Category A images and videos to 13 other persons over a period of 6 months.  The third aggravating feature is the presence of moving images, videos, to which we have already referred.  In the circumstances those features have the effect of aggravating the starting point as it is to 4 years at Count 1 and 5 years at Count 4 of the Indictment.  We give you full credit for your pleas of guilty resulting in a sentence (giving the full discount of one third) of 3 years and 4 months imprisonment at Count 4.  We have considered whether or not there are matters of personal mitigation which should result in a further discount of your sentence and having regard to the matters to which I have already referred, which derive from the references and the steps that you have taken since your arrest to address your offending behaviour, we reduce the sentence further on Count 4 to 3 years' imprisonment and we make corresponding adjustments to the other sentences as follows:

(i)        Count 1, from the starting point of 4 years, the sentence is 2 years and 4 months' imprisonment.

(ii)       Count 2, from the starting point of 2 years, the sentence is 15 months' imprisonment.

(iii)      Count 3, from the starting point of 1 year, the sentence is 7 months' imprisonment.

(iv)      Count 4, from the staring point of 5 years, the sentence is 3 years' imprisonment.

All those periods to run concurrently making a total of 3 years' imprisonment.

7.        We order the release of Dr Briggs' report to the prison so that you may continue to have such assistance and treatment as he has recommended in order minimise the risk of any further offending in your case.

8.        We order the forfeiture and destruction of the mobile phone which contained the images found only.  We do not order the forfeiture of any other exhibits as they were not intended to be used or used in your offending and accordingly do not fall within the provisions of the Criminal Justice (Forfeiture Orders) (Jersey) Law 2001.

9.        In respect of the notification requirements under the Sex Offenders (Jersey) Law 2010 ("the 2010 Law"), we have had regard to the appropriate length and agree with your advocate that those notification requirements must apply for a minimum of 7 years from today after which time you will be entitled to apply to the Court to ask for the notifications requirement under the 2010 Law to be disapplied.

10.      We agree for the reasons we have already given, that the test for imposing restrictive order set out in Article 10(4) of the 2010 Law is met and we make the orders in the terms sought by the Crown for a period of 5 years from today. 

Authorities

AG v Godson and Crowley [2013] (2) JLR 1. 

Criminal Justice (Forfeiture Orders) (Jersey) Law 2001. 

Sex Offenders (Jersey) Law 2010. 

AG v Le Gallais [2021] (1) JLR 24. 

AG v Matthews [2020] JRC 186A. 

R v Smith [2012] 1 Cr App R (S) 82.