Ben Spruce, 20, had been convicted of a total of 18 offences, including two of rape, against youngsters between the ages of 11 and 15. The court heard how the police investigation had taken a year and some 250 children had been spoken to as part of it. Two police officers had been seconded to a different office where they had worked full-time on the case for five months.
Eight of the victims were girls and two were boys. Two of the victims lived in Jersey and one in the Isle of Man.
Delivering the court’s sentencing remarks, Judge Catherine Fooks said the defendant had groomed, intimidated and frightened his victims and the scale of his offending had been astonishing.
‘You groomed and targeted young victims and told lies about your cancer in an effort to meet them,’ she said.
‘On any analysis you are dangerous sexual predator. You were driven by your sexual urges and the only way to curb it is for you to be put in prison.’
One of the girls was just 11 when Spruce sent her indecent images of himself. He offered some of his victims money to have sex with him and lied to them about his age. The offending began in 2020 when he was 15, but most of it occurred in 2023.
Prosecuting advocate Phoebe Cobb told court that there had been a clear pattern of offending, with the defendant messaging both female and male children, some of which turned into contact offences.
Two trials had been due to take place, lasting an estimated three months in total. Spruce’s guilty pleas to 13 of the 18 counts reduced the trial time to two and half weeks.
Harrowing victim impact statements that were read to the court highlighted the psychological impact his crimes had caused to victims. In one of the cases he threatened a boy with violence if he did not send him a sexual image of himself. When the boy did this out of fear, Spruce shared the image with the boy’s peers.
In a victim impact statement, the boy’s mother said she had feared that her son would kill himself and said he was now a social recluse. One of the girl victims said the incident had impacted on her relationship with her parents. Another described it as the worst time in her life and said she could still feel Spruce’s hands on her body.
Spruce had denied raping a 13-year-old girl, both vaginally and orally, in a field near her home on Boxing Day 2023. He also denied sexually touching another girl on two occasions in a lane near Beau Sejour.
At trial in March, the court found him guilty of each with unanimous decisions. He was also convicted of sexually assaulting another female in the play area at Saumarez Park by a 6-3 majority.
He admitted six counts of sending indecent material via the telecommunications network and four of making indecent images of children. Such images are graded on a C to A ascending scale in terms of their seriousness and the numbers in this case involved 32 of the most serious images and another 10 rated B.
He also admitted three counts of sexual touching from an incident with a 14-year-old girl at Beau Sejour in May 2023. He filmed himself doing it and sent the videos to the victim which constituted part of the indecent images and telecommunications network offending.
Defending, Advocate Chris Green said his client was not being unrealistic and expected to get a substantial sentence of youth detention.
However, there were some mitigating factors. The rapes had not involved violence or weapons nor had there been drugging or alcohol. The number of indecent images was small and the telecommunications matters were all part and parcel of the same course of offending.
In May 2020 his client had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, for which he was now in remission. He had to spend five months in a UK hospital during the lockdown period when contact with his family had been limited and this had left him ‘broken’ mentally. He had also been diagnosed with autism and had now spent 15 months on remand at the prison.
Counsel said his client’s guilty pleas to 13 of the offences had spared seven of the victims from having to give evidence in court. He was keen to get his life back on track and would not use social media again.
Judge Fooks said Spruce had made and shared some of the most explicit indecent images with children and she rejected Advocate Green’s contention that the numbers had been small. She said the defendant’s best mitigation was that he had no previous convictions.
A sentence of seven years and two months was attached concurrent to each of the rapes. Lesser but consecutive sentences for the other matters took the total penalty to 15 years and five months.
Four phones Spruce used will be destroyed, and he will be subject to an extended sentence licence for five years on his release from prison, and notification requirements for 10 years.
Forfeiture and destruction of four phones which he used in the commission of the offences was ordered.
He will be subject to an extended sentence licence for five years upon his release from youth detention and notification requirements for 10.
