VOYEURISM

An offender’s appeal against the variation of his SHPO to prohibit foreign travel was dismissed, as the police were unable to monitor the risk he presented when he was abroad and their duty to protect children and vulnerable people from the offender included those both in and out of the UK.

A judge had had insufficient regard to totality when imposing consecutive extended sentences totalling 38 years on a prolific sex offender who had pleaded guilty to committing 137 offences over the course of 10 years. A large number of the offences involved the deliberate targeting of vulnerable children on the internet, persuading them to provide him with naked images of themselves and blackmailing them to provide increasingly graphic and humiliating images of them taking part in degrading acts. An extended sentence of 25 years’ custody, with an extension period of eight years, was substituted for the original sentence.

The creation of indecent pseudo images of children, by superimposing photographs of a child’s head onto photographs of naked adults in indecent poses, constituted possession, and not production, of indecent photographs of children within the sentencing guidelines. Production offences did not include those where pseudo images were made using images taken from other sources. A sentence of two years’ imprisonment imposed on an offender of previous good character was reduced to a five-month suspended sentence with a requirement to attend a sexual offences treatment programme.

The court quashed a sentence of 14 months’ imprisonment imposed after an offender’s guilty plea to outraging public decency by taking video footage underneath women’s skirts without their knowledge. A community order with a requirement to attend a sex offender programme was more likely to lead to the offender’s rehabilitation than a custodial sentence and would therefore best serve the interests of the public.

In determining under the Criminal Procedure (Insanity) Act 1964 s.4A(2) whether a defendant, who was unfit to stand trial, was guilty of voyeurism the jury had to be satisfied that he had deliberately observed another person doing a private act for the purpose of his own sexual gratification.

The imposition of a suspended custodial sentence for a basic offence of voyeurism was inappropriate where the offender had pleaded guilty and was a man of good character.

A sentence of imprisonment for public protection imposed following a plea of guilty to sexual offences was upheld where, having regard to the facts of the case and the offender’s previous convictions, the judge had been justified in concluding that he posed a significant risk of causing serious personal injury. However, the specified minimum term of two years was modified to take into account time the offender had already spent in custody.

It had not been appropriate to impose a custodial sentence upon an offender for offences of voyeurism, given the nature of the offence and the offender’s psychiatric state; a community rehabilitation and penalty order was, in the circumstances, more appropriate.

A sentence of 14 months’ imprisonment was excessive for an offence of voyeurism and was substituted by a sentence of nine months’ imprisonment, where the appellant, the manager of a gym, had abused his position of trust by secretly recording videotape of women showering or using sun beds.