Tanning salon voyeur who secretly filmed women jailed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-41499605

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A voyeur who filmed naked women in a tanning salon for his own "squalid sexual gratification" has been jailed for eight months.

Nikolas Heath, 55, covertly recorded footage of six women using sunbeds at a beauty parlour in Bristol.

He was caught when one of the women spotted him in an adjacent booth filming with his mobile phone.

Heath, of Moor Lane, Clapton in Gordano, Somerset, had previously admitted six charges of voyeurism.

Sentencing at Bristol Crown Court, judge James Patrick also banned him from entering any beauty or tanning salon for 10 years.

'Expectation of privacy'

The court heard Heath was at the Gloden salon when a woman saw him filming her.

Prosecutors said he emerged from the booth, apologised.

He then offered a donation to the charity of her choice, by way of an apology, and offered her his phone to delete images.

He told a staff member he had "done something really stupid" and offered a substantial sum of money for it to go no further, the court heard.

Police were contacted, and found videos of five other women on Heath's computer filmed in almost identical circumstances between May and December 2015.

Judge Patrick told Heath the victims had "a reasonable expectation of privacy".

"These women believed they were alone and unobserved and you were probably lying on the floor to surreptitiously film for your own very squalid sexual gratification," he said.

It was plain that Heath "observed and filmed them for a lengthy period of time", and that there was a "significant degree of planning" involved, the judge added.

An iPhone and Apple computer were also ordered to be destroyed by the judge.

Heath, who has a previous conviction for possessing indecent images of children, was placed on the sex offenders' register for 10 years.