LACEY FIREFIGHTER JAILED FOR VOYEURISM AFTER PEEPING THROUGH BATHROOM WINDOW
A LACEY Green ‘pervert’ hooked his mobile phone through a woman’s bathroom window twice in four days as he tried to watch her shower.Simon John Douglas Roach, of Lacey Court, had attached the device to a stick and peeped it through the victim’s open window on the mornings of November 29 and December 2 last year.
The 39-year-old former firefighter had pleaded not guilty to two charges of voyeurism before declining to give evidence after the victim – who cannot be identified for legal reasons – had spoken in court.
He was sentenced to four months imprisonment, suspended for two years, and ordered to pay £1,235 at Stockport Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, June 29.
Prosecuting, Karen Saffman told the court that the woman had opened her frosted bathroom window to let the steam out from her shower.
She said that at 7.35am on December 2 ‘the victim was in the shower and had her back to the window’.
“She then turned towards the window as she turned her back towards the shower head.
At that point she saw a black stick with a phone attached to it,” Mrs Saffman said.
“She screamed and she reached forward to the window shouting ‘you pervert’.” Mrs Saffman added that the defendant had sent the same phone through the bathroom window using a ‘long stick’ at 7.15am on November 29.
In a written statement read in court, the victim said that the incidents had left her feeling ‘uncomfortable in my own home’ and worried ‘where the images might be shared’.
Shirley Fitton, defending, told the court that ‘nothing was recorded’ on Roach’s phone from both incidents because his equipment ‘did not work’.
She added that Roach had left the fire service before his trial began and would not be able to return following his sentencing, leaving him ‘sad to leave a role of public service’.
In addition to his suspended prison sentence, Roach was ordered to pay £500 compensation to the victim, in addition to £620 in prosecution costs and £115 in victim surcharge.
Roach was also handed a restraining order against the victim and will spend seven years on the sex offenders’ register.
A spokesman at Cheshire Fire and Rescue confirmed to the Guardian that Roach worked as an on-call firefighter for seven years, before resigning earlier this year.
