November 2008

Peeping Tom is sent to jail

A PEEPING Tom has been jailed for amassing a library of homemade indecent films taken secretly over four years of women and children.

Anthony Willett’s covert filming included hiding his video camera under a classroom table so he could film a child moving her legs as he taught her to read, said Matthew Bean, prosecuting.

He also secretly filmed a woman friend and her young daughter using the toilet when he stayed overnight at their house, and took sneak shots up women’s skirts in shops.

When police raided his former Tadcaster home they found 112 separate homemade voyeuristic films on his computer and 226 child porn images he had downloaded from the internet, including eight hard-core porn videos.

“It is of particular concern that you abused the trust of your friend and others by invading their privacy in a way that has caused her and no doubt her daughter extreme distress and disgust,” Judge Peter Benson told him at York Crown Court.

He jailed Willett for 16 months and made a lifelong sexual offences prevention order banning him from making or storing any videos of children under 16 or being in contact with them.

He was also barred from working with children for life and put on the sex offenders’ register for ten years.

Willett, 44, of Hawthorn View, Leeds, pleaded guilty to 25 offences including voyeurism, outraging public decency, making child porn, distributing child porn and possessing child porn.

Mr Bean said Willett had twice sent mild child porn to other people via the internet. His perverted pursuits were uncovered after staff at Boots in Albion Street , Leeds, spotted him on CCTV acting suspiciously with a camera poking out of a plastic bag and realised that he was filming up a woman’s skirt. They called in police and he was arrested.

For Willett, Graham Parkin said his crimes covered four years and had led to him losing his job and his marriage. Some of his friends and relatives had cut him off completely.

The court was told he was disgusted with what he had done and shown genuine remorse.

He had problems in his life that he had tried to handle with alcohol and was now taking therapy.