November 2016 Babysitter sentenced to four years in prison for assaulting a child A man has been sentenced to four years in prison for five counts of indecent assault on a young girl. He committed the offences while babysitting for the girl, who was eight, and nine years old at the time. Luis Pereira was found guilty after a five day trial at the Royal Court in Jersey. He’s also been put on the Sex Offenders Register for five years. The Court heard how the girl didn’t report her allegations to police until shortly after the death of her mother last year. She had been looking through her mother’s handbag and come across the note she had written to her in Portuguese shortly before her 10th birthday, telling her what she alleges Mr Pereira was doing to her. The jury heard how at the time her parents had chosen to ignore her claims and maintained a friendship with Mr Pereira and his wife. It wasn’t until a counselling session last year when she was 12, that she showed her school counsellor another letter that she’d written in her diary. She said the abuse took place on a number of occasions when Mr Pereira’s wife had gone out to work, and she was alone in the flat with him. The court heard her account of how she would go for a sleep in the couple’s bed and would wake up when she says he was touching her. The girl later gave evidence in person, telling the court of how, following the alleged assaults, she began to steal items from the Pereira household including perfumes, a purse and an expensive watch, “…for attention, to get help,” because she “felt scared” and, “…didn’t want to go to that place anymore.”