EXCLUSIVE: Paedophile demands his £107 back from Premier Inn after his stay was cut a day short when he was jailed for sexually abusing a choirboy

 

• Stuart Eager, 73, was staying at Premier Inn while he was on a sex abuse trial 
• He was convicted of sexually assaulting a child and was jailed for four years
• But now he is demanding a refund of £107.50 after he had to cut short his stay
• Eager's claim was discovered after he asked for help in consumer advice column

 

A retired solicitor has waged an obsessive three-year campaign to get a refund from Premier Inn after he was forced to cut short his stay - because he was convicted of sexually abusing a choirboy and sent to prison.

Stuart Eager has been seeking the return of £107.50 he says the hotel group owes him after he was forced to cancel part of his booking at short notice because he'd been jailed.

 

Eager, 73, had booked a room for six days at the branch in Portsmouth in May 2019 for his trial at the nearby Crown Court for historic sex offenses.

 

But he was found guilty and sent to prison after just four days meaning he'd paid for two nights he didn't use. Rather than concentrating on his perhaps more pressing issues in prison however, this was to spark an extraordinary campaign to recover the relatively small sum.

 

The story of his obsessive attempt to recover his £107.50 emerged this week after Eager wrote to The Daily Telegraph outlining his complaint and hoping to solicit help in recovering the money.

 

He told how he had booked a stay at a Premier Inn for six nights, paying in full on his arrival, when he was standing trial at a Crown Court 'following a false accusation dating back 30 years'.

 

He wrote: 'I had no idea how long the trial might go on. It lasted just four days and the verdict did not go my way (juries sometimes get it wrong). I was sent down for four years.'

 

He explained how he had struggled to cancel the booking himself because he was in custody but asked his solicitor to call. But he's since been told, he claims, that the company has no record of receiving this call. And while he accepted it was too late to cancel the first unused night he still felt he should be entitled to a refund of £107.50 for the second night.

 

He went on: 'I was released from prison on probation two years later, and for the past six months I have been attempting to extract a refund from the Premier Inn, but without success....It was galling enough to serve time for a crime I had not committed without Premier Inn trying to profit from my misfortune.'

 

Eager's attempt to get sympathy fell flat however - and instead the Telegraph's response was less than warm: 'You disclosed that you were found guilty of a crime but chose not to elaborate further, so I ran an internet search on you. You are a convicted paedophile... Now more than two years have passed since the booking. You have accused Premier Inn of profiting at your expense, yet I can't see any real evidence that it did anything wrong.'

 

They added: 'Frankly, I'm surprised you wrote to this column over something comparatively trivial when the circumstances around it are so dreadfully disturbing. '

 

The Telegraph was bound by the convention of keeping their correspondents' identities confidential and so only published his initials.

But MailOnline was able to identify Eager and tracked him down to a residential home in Swindon, Wilts to find he remains unapologetic - and still wants a refund.

 

He admitted he may have become 'preoccupied by the issue' but said he was unlikely to be pursuing his claim against Premier Inn any further in light of the response.

 

And he attacked the Telegraph writer for her response, saying: 'I thought it was bang out of order. I thought it was a bit over the top because I'm not quite sure whether it was relevant.

 

'My claim was against the Premier Inn in Portsmouth rather than dig up the dirt on what is history.

 

'I've written back to her suggesting she shouldn't believe everything she reads on the internet.

 

'She considered my letter and took it on board but not in the way she should have. She's there to chase up financial matters.'

 

He further complained: 'She thinks it's trivial. That's interesting because when she advertises her very commendable column she says she will investigate cases involving £1 or £1million. In my case it's £100.

 

Read More Here: Daily Mail