EX-ROBERTS BAKERY WORKER SHARED INTIMATE PICTURE WITHOUT CONSENT
A FORMER line manager at a bakery in Northwich will face ‘all options in sentencing’ next month after he admitted sharing an intimate picture without permission.Lee Colloby pleaded guilty to one charge at Chester Magistrates Court on Tuesday, April 8.
It relates to an incident where, on September 20 last year, the 39-year-old – then a line manager at Roberts Bakery – entered a colleague’s locker, opened his phone and took a picture from his own phone of the man’s girlfriend in an intimate state.
He did not have consent to do this from either the colleague or his girlfriend.
Colloby then showed the picture to another worker at the business ‘for a laugh’ before deleting the image.
However, according to his defence, that person then went to his colleague and told him what happened, leading to a police complaint from his girlfriend and Colloby losing his job at the firm.
The court heard a victim impact statement on behalf of the girlfriend, who said that she had been ‘caused great anxiety by what had happened’.
In her statement, she said: “I found it extremely horrible to hear – I didn’t know what to think or do and he has made me feel extremely vulnerable.
I didn’t consent for him to see or have them.” She added she has also had to take time off work and 'feels horrible that someone could see this without consent’.
The victim added: “This is a violation of my privacy and I feel disgusted this has happened.” The court heard she is now on medication because of the anxiety caused by the incident, which has ‘had an impact on her relationship’.
However, there were no applications for a sexual harm prevention order.
A solicitor defending Colloby said that his client was ‘deeply remorseful’ for his actions and that he deleted the image, which police found after investigating his phone.
He said: “He is embarrassed to find himself in this situation and if he’d given it any real thought, he wouldn’t have done it.
“ The implications are very serious for him.” He added: “He used to work at Roberts Bakery, in a team leader role from the shopfloor, and they have to leave phones in their lockers.
“In a state of high jinks, he enters the locker, finds the phone and the picture and then take his own picture of it.
“He showed one colleague who laughed about it but then told the boyfriend of the claimant.
“This led to his sacking at the company.” The solicitor also called for a swift resolution of the case, believing his client was genuinely remorseful and should be fined.
However, the bench told Colloby a pre-sentence report was required and that there were ‘criminogenic needs that need to be addressed by probation especially in regard to thinking skills’.
The defendant, of Harrier Close in Leigh, was also told the custody threshold ‘could have been crossed’ but moved to assure him that a prison sentence was unlikely.
He will be sentenced on Monday, May 12.
