Young drug addict "wanted to escape reality"

Saturday 15 February 2020

A 17-year-old has been sentenced to two years and three months in youth detention for committing three separate drug and fraud offences in the space of six months.

The teenager, who was 16 at the time of the first offence, was sentenced for importing cannabis, using his father's bank details to make an Amazon order without this knowledge or permission, and then for importing cannabis resin while on bail for the previous offences.

In May 2019, customs officers at Guernsey Post confiscated a package addressed to the defendant which contained 24.7g of cannabis. He was arrested and his room at the HSC-run residence he was living at was searched.

Police found evidence on his phone that the teenager had researched different strains of cannabis online and had visited sites where it could be purchased, including one that matched the packaging of the order which had been confiscated. 

Four days later, he purchased a games console and two other items from Amazon totalling around £180 using his father's bank details. His father contacted Amazon after seeing the amount leave his account and then reported the matter.

In October, while these court proceedings were still ongoing, another package was intercepted by customs officers which contained 56g of cannabis resin. On this occasion, the defendant failed to provide his pin code to the police and has been remanded in custody since. 

Defence Advocate Liam Roffey said his client was young, immature and was suffering from mental health issues and a spiralling drug addiction which had got out of control. 

"He was a child when he became addicted to drugs," he told the Court.

"He said "I took whatever I could get my hands on - I just wanted to escape reality.""

Pictured: The defendant has been on remand since October last year. 

After the first offence, he went into "self-destruct mode and felt he had nothing to lose."

"It is in that context that you then have the second and third offences," said Advocate Roffey. 

Being remanded in October broke that pattern of self-destructive behaviour and there were positives to be taken from it. 

"That intervention may well have just saved his life," said Advocate Roffey. "He is feeling so much better from being substance free. He now knows there is a life without drugs."

In sentencing, Judge Russell Finch noted that the teenager had also admitted to importing drugs on two previous occasions, both of which the authorities had been previously unaware of. 

However, all the signs were that the defendant had a high risk of re-offending.

After the first cannabis charge, he had written a letter apologising and saying he would never try to import drugs again. Judge Finch said the fact that the teenager had proceeded to re-offend just months later showed "just how reliable your apology was".

"You don’t learn from your mistakes and re-offended after making a crawling apology," he told him. 

Judge Finch sentenced him to 27 months in youth detention, starting from 11 October 2019 when he was remanded in custody.