Swimming pool pervert walks free for second time (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Swimming pool pervert walks free for second time

4:06pm Thursday 22nd March 2007 in Swindon By Gazette Reporter

Swimming pool pervert Stephen Reynolds has walked free from court for the second time in a month.

The 49-year-old was put on a three-year probation order three weeks ago for putting a camera under a changing room cubicle to take pictures of naked children.

But while he was on bail awaiting sentence depraved Reynolds went to an internet cafe in Weston super Mare and downloaded paedophile stories from the internet.

He was charged with outraging public decency but had not entered a plea before facing sentence for a voyeurism offence.

Although the court was aware of the allegation, Reynolds' legal team suggested their client may not have committed an offence.

Chris Smyth, defending, said "There is no dispute in the facts; it is accepted he did in this internet cafe download this material.

"The difficulty is whether the charge is made out."

He said that there needed to be somebody who is capable of seeing the material in question to outrage public decency.

However after further evidence was put forward showing the owners of the internet cafe monitored what went on at the premises Reynolds, of Reading Street, Railway Village, pleaded guilty.

But he will face no further penalty as Judge Douglas Field, sitting at Swindon Crown court, said he would have passed the same order had he been dealing with both matters together.

Reynolds went to the Java Internet Caf in the Somerset resort on Tuesday, September 12 last year and accessed the filth via their computers.

The offence came five months after he was caught with the camera at the Oasis Leisure centre on Easter Monday last year.

Earlier this month the judge imposed the community order along with a condition he attend the Thames Valley Sex Offender Programme, after hearing how he pointed a camera under the cubicle wall.

A dad was changing his six-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son in a family changing area when the boy spotted the lens poking up from the gap below the side partition.

After being confronted by the angry father Reynolds claimed he was being attacked and used the time to smash the camera, stamping on it to ensure it was destroyed.

He told officers he smashed it as there were pictures of his daughter on it and he feared what the police would think.

Mr Smyth told the earlier hearing that his client realised he had a problem and was actively seeking help from his GP.

"He accepts he has an attraction to young girls and is willing to address the problem," he told the court.

As well as the probation order with the sex offenders programme the judge also banned him from working with children for life and imposed a sexual offences prevention order to restrict his liberty in the future.

At the latest hearing Judge Field said: "It was quite clear I had in mind this second offence when I passed sentence.

"If things had worked out differently it may have been before the court on that day."

He imposed a three-year conditional discharge, meaning he will not be punished for the matter unless he commits another offence during the period of the order.