November 2014 ‘Callous and wicked’ paedophile jailed for nine-and-a-half years ‘Callous’ and ‘wicked’ was how a Royal Court judge described a paedophile sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison yesterday. Judge Russell Finch also condemned Nick Finigan, 45, pictured, who indecently assaulted two children 15 years ago, for forcing his victims to give evidence in the trial after he pleaded not guilty. ‘You have robbed them of their entitlement to a normal young life but justice has slowly, surely and properly caught up with you,’ he said. He added the electrician’s probation report had painted ‘a disturbing picture of a person lacking insight and remorse’. Judge Finch said it had noted how Finigan had sought to ‘weasel his way out’ of previous convictions for possessing indecent images of children and indecently assaulting a girl – despite the fact he had pleaded guilty to these offences in 2003. It also showed he viewed the guilty verdict at last month’s trial as a ‘miscarriage of justice’. Judge Finch said, because of this, Finigan continued to pose a risk to children. September 2003 Paedophiles should get longer sentences’ A mother whose 15-year-old daughter was asked for sex by a paedophile has criticised his lenient prison sentence. Nicholas Finigan was jailed for six months, but the girl’s mother said his pretence to be a woman when he made contact with the girl via the Internet should have brought a stronger sentence. ‘I want to warn parents to keep an eye on who their kids are talking to online and advise them not to go to meet them and not to give out addresses or mobile phone numbers,’ she said. ‘You just don’t know what is going to happen. Most of the time you think you are speaking to someone innocent, but you are not always.’ Finigan, 33, a self-employed electrician, who lived in St Peter Port was sentenced to three months in jail for indecently assaulting the girl. He received a consecutive three-month sentence for distributing indecent photographs. Possessing them also cost him £3,000. He sent to the teenager wedding photos of an unknown woman pretending they were of him. ‘It started when she was 15. They met through an AOL chat room, where you can find out if the person is from Guernsey, and my daughter thought it was a female,’ said the mother. ‘They swapped text messages with funny jokes a few times.’ Finigan knew what she looked like and where she lived. One day the 15-year-old girl went to the Bridge where she received a text message on her mobile phone saying, ‘I can see you and I’m watching you’. ‘She looked round and could not see a women who looked like the picture on the Internet. As she was walking back along the Bridge, some guy poked his head out of a car window and commented on her stripy socks,’ said the mother. ‘He introduced himself and said he was sorry but he did not trust people in Guernsey, which is why he pretended he was a woman,’ she said. ‘Like an idiot, she got in his car. They went for a spin and then he went to drop her off at her dad’s. That is when he put his hand on her knee and asked if she wanted sex.’ Her daughter said ‘no’, got out of the car and left, but failed to tell anybody about the incident, thinking that was the end of it. ‘Then he started texting her for a few weeks afterwards asking her if she wanted sex and whether she was into older men. She kept texting him back to tell him to leave her alone,’ said the mother. Months later, the mother had a phone call from a child protection officer because police had found a good photo of her daughter on Finigan’s computer. The mother said that the incident had had an effect on her daughter. ‘She has been really stressed out but some of this lifted when he was convicted.’ The girl is also worried about what might happen on Finigan’s release early next year. ‘I can foresee vigilante action against paedophiles if tougher sentences are not imposed,’ said the mother. She claimed that her daughter’s case was only the tip of the iceberg in Guernsey and that there were many paedophiles walking around the island. Police declined to comment.