Girl, 13, raped and teen guilty of sex crimes on nine others

Ben Frank Spruce, now 19, had denied a total of five sex offences but was found guilty of each at the end of a trial that had lasted for two and half weeks.

The true scope of his crimes were revealed when the court was told that, with matters he had already admitted, there were a total of 10 victims of his sexual crimes – eight girls and two boys, all under the age of 16.

Judge Catherine Fooks took about two hours to sum the case the case up to the jurats, who then took a similar amount of time to reach their verdicts.

Spruce had denied raping the 13-year-old girl, both vaginally and orally, in a field near her home, along with sexually touching another girl on two occasions in a lane near Beau Sejour. The court found him guilty of all with unanimous decisions. He was convicted of sexually assaulting another female in the play area at Saumarez Park by a 6-3 majority.

Jurats were told at the start of the trial that he had already admitted offences involving three other girls. They included three counts of sexually touching one girl at Beau Sejour, and two of misusing the telecommunications network by sending images of his penis to girls in Jersey aged just 11 and 12.

The Guernsey Press can reveal that he had admitted a further four counts of misusing the telecommunications network by sending messages of an indecent character to four other victims.

He also admitted four counts of making indecent images of children – two relating to category A images, and two to category B. Indecent images of children are graded on an ascending scale of C to A in terms of their seriousness. Publication of those matters had been prohibited by the court for legal reasons, but the restriction was lifted at the end of yesterday’s proceedings.

The public gallery was full when the decisions were read out and the defendant showed no emotion.

He will be sentenced in May when a probation report has been prepared. For the defendant, Advocate Chris Green said he had commissioned a psychologist to prepare a report on his client.