Registered child sex offender Nigel Jacob Nona fails to report contact with children

A registered child sex offender working at a Whitsunday pub who failed to report regular contact with minors has been told he faced a fine of $50,000 or five years in jail. Read why he didn’t report his contact.

A Whitsunday child sex offender who worked alongside children in a pub kitchen without informing authorities has been fined $600 and warned he will be in serious trouble if he breaches his reporting obligations again.

Nigel Jacob Nona’s work as a chef at Proserpine’s Prince of Wales Hotel brought him into regular contact with several juvenile male and female co-workers between April 30 and June 1 2021 and he failed to report this to police within the required time frame.

Proserpine Magistrates Court heard the 37 year old was a registered child sex offender subject to reporting conditions as per the Child Protection Offender Reporting and Offender Prohibition Order Act for 15 years until December 2034.

Nigel Jacob Nona pleaded guilty to failing to comply with reporting obligations without a reasonable excuse. Picture: Facebook

Police prosecutor Sergeant Emma Myors said Nona initially denied having contact with the children but eventually admitted he had failed to report because he “didn’t want to ask for the children’s personal details to provide to [authorities]”.

Nona pleaded guilty to two counts of failing to comply with reporting obligations without a reasonable excuse.

Defence barrister Phillip Moore said his client had no criminal history in Queensland and the most recent conviction on his Western Australian history was from 2018.

Mr Moore said Nona’s failure to report was because he did not know how to approach his young workmates to obtain the information police required.

“When he got that job, he did realise that some of the other employees in the kitchen were minors and he was going to have to do something – he hadn’t got around to it,” Mr Moore said.

“He was a bit unsure how to approach them – the details that were required apparently were quite significant in terms of getting full names, addresses, parents’ details – so in a way asking for the details of those children was something that he just didn’t know how to approach, he just got put off, unfortunately.”

The court heard Nona, 37, worked at the Prince of Wales Hotel for about a year before leaving because he considered the new management “terrible”. Picture: Facebook

Mr Moore maintained Nona had complied with other reporting conditions such as notifying authorities of changes of address, and had never socialised with the juvenile staff outside of work as it was “not that type of workplace”.

Acting magistrate Ron Muirhead said Nona could face up to five years’ jail or a $50,000 fine for the offence but taking into account the surrounding facts, the penalty “should be less than what it normally is”.

He fined Nona $600, with convictions recorded, and told him: “If you ever breach those obligations again, I’d imagine you’d be facing a very heavy penalty.”