In court for filming under womens' clothing but "no sexual element" WTF?

[BigBoysDontCry]

As per the title, so what was he doing it for? Research into female underwear?

https://news.stv.tv/west-central/former-teacher-caught-operating-alleged-dashcam-underneath-womens-clothing-at-cathouse-nightclub?fbclid=IwY2xjawFEOUlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHZDLRR-OPEgOKGNK2D5reedxAKZx_SUm4BKpJYTdZjx-j6IQEcjZ4gg8AQ_aem_SdAbrxfEd-A6Ym7pegNyOA

Turnbull was later apprehended by police who attended the nightclub.

PC Stuart Horborne told the court that the device was seized but did not contain a USB stick or a memory card inside it.

My bold. Gosh, it's lucky he didn't have time to dispose of anything. I love to know how the 'no sexual element' was determined.

Yep, how can it be anything other than sexual? What possible other reason can you have to look up womens' skirts etc?

its clearly another work of "art House" bollocks for creative Scotland.

Oh yeah, how did I miss that, he's an artist not a sexual predator.

Must give men the benefit of the doubt no matter what...!

I spend a lot of time in (English) courts and pretty much every man who does stuff like this says ‘it wasn’t sexual’. Also, most paedophiles tell the court, straight faced, they have no sexual interest in children.

I’ve never yet seen a judge actually believe this shit from defendant 🤷🏻‍♀️

And will they have gone over his history of working in a school and for the NHS? I mean he has a degree so it's all fine right? I mean he's not some brainless thug, we need to respect this pervert with his degree and employment history in trusted positions. Can't jeopardise that with an entry on the sexual offenders register eh? 😡

But of course, can't ruin any future employment opportunities for the poor man who did nothing too untoward🤬 being a creepy pervert isn't a good enough reason to ruin his prospects. Blows my mind trying to work out how the judge decided this one

Sheriff Allan McKay fined Turnbull £1,040 but stated there was “no sexual element” to the case and did not make him subject to the sex offenders register requirements.

I find this grossly implausible.

So, apparently in that awful French case with the woman whose husband was drugging her and inviting strangers round to rape her, he was initially caught trying to film up strangers skirts and they then found the videos of his wife's rapes (about a hundred I think?) on his devices. Definitely not a sexual element to targeting women in public and filming up their skirts at all. 😡

was about to say the same - it was being detained for upskirting that meant that the police caught the husband in this case.
Too often, men are let off "lesser" sex offences and it turns out that they were leading to greater offences.
see also Wayne Couzens.

Did he, aye? How do we ask for enquiries into judges' surprisingly lenient sentencing for sex offences?

The conviction would show on an enhanced DBS so I would hope no school or health organisation would employ him.

Really?
English Judges (maybe all Judges) are famously shit at caring about sexual crimes against women & girls

Only a man would be saying that Bloody ridiculous.

I don’t find that at all and I sit in court as a lay person pretty much every day.

You get the odd loony judge but most of them see through the crap these blokes come out with. They’re good, wise people who have seen it all before many times.

I’d there are 15 sex offenders in the mags and crown court every single day in my county, which is replicated across the country. Most of the cases you’ll never read about because there are so few court reporters. The ones you read about, the ones that go viral, are usually the ones where a judge has got it wrong or people don’t agree with the decision. I’d really urge people to go and sit in court for a day and see how things operate. Most courts start at 10am and the public have full access.

@JaniceBattersby ... so what happened with this case then? Because the judge did believe there was nothing sexual in the perverts actions?

And I've been to court a few times myself.
Talk about divorced from reality.
It's a wonder any criminals get convicted (& I'm a lefty so I would prefer the money was invested in communities rather than prisons and judges/lawyers salaries)

It beggars belief that the Sheriff didn't understand the sexual element of this man's actions. Breach of the peace indeed.

Absolutely no idea. I wasn’t in court. As I said, there are some loony judges so maybe this was one of them.

In always try to include much more detail in my reports so readers can understand a bit better how judges reach the conclusions they do, but largely the judges in the crown court I sit in do tend to have a really good grasp on crimes against women and girls. It’s an improvement I’ve noticed in maybe the last four or five years (largely thanks I think to the fantastic campaigning by women to promote better understanding)

Bloody hell that's a relief to hear. Thank you.

Here's a real throw-back of a judgment from Ireland - I hope it's not behind a paywall - where the judge seemed to be operating from the basis that men are men, women are women, and toilets are similarly separate.

Man in women's toilets. Not filming or anything. Startled and frightened woman.
Judge called it a 'Peeping Tom' incident i.e. sexual, and there wasn't even a hint of a suggestion that he had any right to be in the women's toilets. It clearly didn't occur to his defence to say he had ladyfeelz!

So what the Judge said sounded very sensible, including

The judge also warned him to have no contact with the complainant and told him he must stay out of DCU and all public toilets “save for those assigned to those of male gender”.
The college security engineer, who was suspended from work, was also fined €500 and ordered to pay €1,000 compensation and to obey conditions, or the sentence would be activated. .
Sean Farrell (24), avoided jail and walked free from court on a six-month suspended sentence after being convicted of indecent conduct of a sexual nature in women’s toilets at Dublin City University (DCU) on September 20th, 2023.

He 'avoided jail', but you can't lock everybody up for everything, and in this case I think the suspended sentence may have been OK? I don't know if he is now on the sex offenders' register.

This is a welcome statement from a judge in 2024:
The judge said the victim was in a vulnerable situation while the accused was in a position of trust in the university.
Nice to see a judge acknowledging that women are in 'a vulnerable situation' when they are using the toilet.

The Missing Link:
Female student caught man (24) spying on her while using the toilet at Dublin university campus – The Irish Times

I'm adding 'Breach of the peace' to Wicked's Big Old Book of Words Wot Don't Mean Wot They Used To.

I’d there are 15 sex offenders in the mags and crown court every single day in my county, which is replicated across the country. Most of the cases you’ll never read about because there are so few court reporters. The ones you read about, the ones that go viral, are usually the ones where a judge has got it wrong or people don’t agree with the decision. I’d really urge people to go and sit in court for a day and see how things operate. Most courts start at 10am and the public have full access.

I am interested in seeing how the courts work but I don’t think I could stomach seeing sex offenders.