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A disgraced ex-teacher’s five-year jail term remains unscathed after the Court of Appeal rejected his attempt to quash his conviction for sexually abusing two teenage girl.
Ian David Priestley’s argument that he was the victim of a “substantial miscarriage of justice” due to what he claimed were unsubstantiated allegations of further sexual abuse being introduced to the jury as “evidence” were this morning defeated.
The former Les Quennevais and Le Rocquier teacher has always denied the charges of indecent assault and procuring acts of gross indecency, but his lawyer's arguments were not enough to convince the appeal judges that his trial was prejudiced and his sentence was “manifestly excessive.”
He mounted an appeal before Court of Appeal President Mr James McNeil QC, Miss Clare Montgomery QC and Bailiff of Guernsey Sir Richard Collas on the grounds that one of his victims was allowed to testify at trial about further alleged abuse she claims she suffered at Priestley’s hands while the pair were in the UK.
Pictured: Priestley leaving Court on a previous occasion.
The woman accused Priestley of kissing her and performing oral sex on her when she was a teenager as well as groping her bottom on another occasion, but these purported incidents could not be charged by the Jersey Courts as they are alleged to have taken place in a different jurisdiction.
The admission of such evidence, Priestley’s lawyer Advocate Ian Jones argued, amounts to a “substantial miscarriage of justice.”
However, the Court of Appeal did not agree, ruling the woman’s evidence as “essential background” concerning the nature of her relationship with Priestley and crucial to put the charged incidents for which he has now been convicted “into context.”
Pictured: The appeal hinged on evidence given by one of the complainants regarding further incidents alleged to have taken place in the UK.
Reading out the judgment, Miss Clare Montgomery QC observed that “without this background”, the rest of the woman’s testimony about how she was “susceptible to [Priestley’s] attempts to manipulate her” would have seemed “incomprehensible” to the jury.
Advocate Jones also made the case at appeal that his client’s sentence was “manifestly excessive” and that he should have been sentenced in adherence with the English sentencing guidelines.
The Court of Appeal again ruled against Priestley on this point, saying that although Jersey courts can follow the sentencing guidelines of England and Wales, “they do not have to do so and there is no presumption that such sentencing levels have to be followed.”
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