Jamie Nugent-Squires (Image: South Wales Police)
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A man judged to pose such a danger to children that an ordinary prison term would not adequately protect the public has been handed an extended sentence at Swansea Crown Court.
Jamie Gerald Paul Nugent-Squires, 40, was already banned from unsupervised contact with children when he began messaging someone he believed to be a 14-year-old boy. The account was in fact a decoy operated by an adult.
The defendant, formerly of Min yr Afon, Ystalyfera, Swansea Valley and now of Llys Dyfnant, Clyne, Neath Valley, has also gone by the names Jamie Roberts and Jamie Whelan. He had earlier admitted attempted breach of a sexual harm prevention order, attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming, and criminal damage, along with racially aggravated harassment and a public order offence.
The online contact
Prosecutor Tom Scapens said the exchanges began on Snapchat in April this year before shifting to WhatsApp, in breach of an order imposed four years earlier.
Alongside conversation about football and other everyday subjects, Nugent-Squires asked whether the “boy” was gay and said he would like a boyfriend like him. Talk turned to meeting up, with the defendant offering to buy “poppers” – the common name for amyl nitrite. He also sent photographs of himself to the account.
Arrest outside Specsavers
A meeting was arranged for Neath town centre on April 16. Officers detained him outside the town’s Specsavers branch as he waited for his contact to arrive by train.
Questioned afterwards, he accepted he had been messaging the decoy but rejected any suggestion of sexual motive. He then became “irate” and pushed a police laptop to the floor, cracking the screen.
Abuse at Cardiff Central
Two further matters, both committed on 18 October last year, were dealt with at the same hearing. At Cardiff Central railway station the defendant racially abused a security guard, telling him: “Go back to your own country – you shouldn’t be in my country.”
A female Transport for Wales worker was called a “dirty slag”. He told her he was going to “smash her face in” and said he hoped she got raped.
A record going back to 2001
The court was told Nugent-Squires has 21 previous convictions covering 26 offences.
The earliest relevant matter dates to 2001, when at the age of 14 he was convicted of indecently assaulting a five-year-old girl in a shower block at a beach. Breaches of a sexual offending prevention order in 2004 and 2005 brought three years’ detention in a young offenders’ institution.
The 2022 offences
In 2022 he was jailed for 42 months over two separate episodes involving vulnerable teenagers living in care, and was made subject to the seven-year sexual harm prevention order he has now breached. One of its conditions barred him from unsupervised contact with children.
The first episode surfaced on 21 December 2021, when Swansea officers were alerted that a girl and a boy had each failed to return to their respective care homes by curfew the previous night. Enquiries led to his flat in Skewen, where police knocked at 3.40am. The lights were on and the blinds twitched, but nobody came to the door.
He eventually answered fully clothed, claiming he had been asleep. A search initially suggested he was alone – until officers moved a large heap of bedding and clothing stacked against a bedroom wardrobe and found the two missing teenagers hiding inside. Both were returned to their care homes and he was arrested.
The second came on 28 February 2022, involving the same boy and another male youth also in care. He met them at Swansea railway station and brought them back to the Skewen address, where alcohol was drunk and the two teenagers smoked cannabis. He raised the idea of obtaining amphetamine because it “makes you really horny”. An argument at around 4am ended with him chasing the pair out of the flat, apparently at knife-point. One of them phoned his care home and a staff member drove over to collect him.
Defence
Matt Murphy, for Nugent-Squires, said his client was “struggling” on remand in the custodial environment and would take up as many rehabilitation and educational courses as he could while inside, so that he might “move on in society in a more constructive manner” upon his eventual release.
The barrister said the defendant wished to apologise to his victims, and to the court for the way he had presented at earlier hearings.
Sentencing
Judge Huw Rees said that however “distasteful and pejorative” the language used at Cardiff Central had been, the defendant’s sexual interest in children was the greater concern.
Turning to the offending history and the pre-sentence report, the judge said Nugent-Squires is “highly sexually preoccupied” and has “persistently and actively looked for opportunities to offend”.
He said a prison sentence was “not only necessary and entirely deserving”, but concluded that the level of risk posed to children meant a standard term would not be enough to protect the public.
With credit for his guilty pleas, Nugent-Squires received an extended sentence of five years and 11 months – two years and 11 months in custody followed by a three-year extended licence period.
He must serve two-thirds of the custodial element before he can apply for release, and it will fall to the Parole Board to decide whether he is safe to be let out. He will be a registered sex offender for the next 10 years.
