A SWINDON man has been found guilty of forcing a teenage girl to perform lewd sex acts on a dog – and send him the photos and videos.
Trevor Fernandes was unanimously found guilty of 16 sex offences by jurors on Thursday.
The 37-year-old used an encrypted partition of his Samsung Galaxy S10 to hide apps including Snapchat and Kik, and then threatened to release sexually explicit images of an American girl he was talking to unless she followed his every instruction.
Whilst in his basement bedroom at the house he shared with his brother and sister-in-law, Fernandes told the girl to strip naked and perform sex acts on herself, her baby sister and pet dog – and demanded photo and video evidence of this on the command “check”.
During the day-long abuse in 2020, he also made the girl call him ‘master’ or ‘master Trevor’.
Fernandes, of Dixon Street, stood trial charged with seven counts of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and nine counts of making indecent photographs of a child.
He claimed that his phone had been hacked, and that he had no knowledge of the encrypted Knox partition that was used to abuse the girl.
The claims were rubbished by experts who said even if that was possible, only hostile states such as Russia and China could pull it off.
Jurors were not convinced by the defendant’s case, and took just 90 minutes to convict him on Thursday.
They passed unanimous verdicts, and Judge Jason Taylor QC remanded him into custody pending a sentencing hearing in August.
“You have been convicted on overwhelming evidence of extremely serious charges and it is inevitable that a lengthy custodial sentence will follow,” he said, saying he was ordering a report that would consider whether he should make a finding of dangerousness.
This would allow the judge to impose an extended licence period.
Judge Taylor also thanked the jury, made up of three women and nine men, saying trial by jury is the “best part” of the legal system.
Fernandes’s trial also heard evidence that the ‘cuteandstrict’ Kik account and ‘Reckitt03’ Instagram account he used to abuse the American girl had been linked with a British girl’s abuse.
Jurors heard earlier this week that the style of the abuse was similar, with ‘Trevor’ using the word “check” to demand photos or videos from the victim as evidence that she was carrying out his instructions.
‘Trevor’ also made the girl perform a sex act on her family dog, and self-harm at his behest.
None of the 16 charges that were put to him related to this second alleged victim.
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