Pensioner fined for racist comments to office worker

Keith John Cherry, 65, of Flat 205, Cour du Parc, La Charroterie, was fined £1,000 and ordered to pay £500 compensation after he called the officer worker a ‘monkey’ and told her she ‘should go back to where she came from’.

Cherry had pleaded not guilty to the charge of behaving in a disorderly manner, but Judge Graeme McKerrell found him totally unconvincing and delivered a guilty verdict.

The woman, who was called as a witness to the case, said she had lived in Guernsey for 16 years and it was the first time she had ever encountered racist behaviour in the island.

She told the court that, on 24 April, she had taken a late lunch hour and was walking along Burnt Lane in St Peter Port while talking on her phone in Swahili to her sister, who lives in Kenya.

Cherry was walking in the same direction a few feet in front of her when, unprovoked, he turned around and said ‘stop that racket right now’.

The woman paused her conversation and asked Cherry if he was speaking to her because she was baffled by his outburst. Cherry responded, ‘yes, you monkey’ and added that she should ‘go back to where she came from’.

The woman told her sister, in English, that she needed to terminate the call because she wanted to use the video on her phone.

Cherry then quickly walked off, and issued a severe profanity and repeated the ‘monkey’ word.

The complainant, who became distressed in the witness stand while recounting the incident, said she was left feeling shocked so she went back to her office desk, but her colleagues noticed that she seemed agitated.

Asked by defence advocate Samuel Steel if was possible that her attention was split between her sister and Cherry, and whether she could have been mistaken in her hearing, she responded ‘No sir, I was not mistaken.’

Later on that evening the woman reported the matter to the police and gave them a video still of the back of Cherry as he hurried off.

A week later police arrested Cherry and he took part in an identity parade and was positively identified.

In his first police interview transcripts shown to the court showed Cherry gave virtually all ‘no comment’ responses to the officers, but in the second interview he opened up more and said he had done nothing wrong.

When Cherry took the witness stand he strongly denied that he had called out racist names, or that he was a racist.

He said that the complainant was talking very loudly on her mobile phone in a quiet backstreet and all he had said was ‘cor, do you have to speak so loud?’

Cherry told the court that he had worked for 20 years as a gardener prior to retiring and in that time he had worked with many different cultures and never had any problems with anyone.

He said he had not even realised that the woman had been speaking in a foreign language, and when Prosecuting Officer Jenny McVeigh asked him how it was possible that he did not pick up that a different language was being spoken if the woman was speaking so loudly, he was not able to recall how that was the case.

In delivering his verdict, Judge McKerrell said that in his 35 years as a lawyer and judge he had seen thousands of people give evidence so he was well placed in differentiating between who was speaking the truth and who was putting on an act.

He said he was entirely convinced that the complainant was completely credible, and that Cherry’s ‘animated’ performance was not true.

Judge McKerrell told Cherry that there was no excuse for his words that day, but he would take into account the defendant’s age and that whilst he was ‘no stranger to the court’ the date of his most recent previous appearance was back in 2011.

He was ordered to pay the £1,000 fine and the £500 compensation at £40 per week.