Married owner of soft play area was secretly filming the girls’ toilets
THE founder of a chain of soft play areas was jailed for 16 months yesterday for secretly filming mothers and daughters in the toilets.
Darren Johnson, 51, made hundreds of explicit films through two peepholes in a bathroom and staff changing room at an Eddie Catz play centre.
The company director was finally caught when he took photos of two 14-year-old girls as they changed in a cubicle at his local swimming pool.
The girls spotted an iPhone pointing at them from the adjoining cubicle and complained to staff at Putney Leisure Centre in south-west London.
After Johnson was arrested, police seized two computers at his £1.5million home nearby which contained hundreds of images of women in states of undress. Some of the films were of mothers and their children using toilets at an Eddie Catz play centre in Earlsfield in south-west London. Others showed female employees getting dressed in private changing rooms.
Johnson pleaded guilty last month at Kingston Crown Court to five counts of voyeurism between 2005 and 2017.
Jailing him yesterday, Judge Andrew Campbell said: ‘ These were dreadful offences because, first, some involved children. Secondly, because of the number of adult women that you recorded – not less than 30 or 40 and probably many more.
‘Thirdly, the extraordinary breach of trust at Eddie Catz. You were making images of women who you were employing and of mothers and children who trusted you when they were using your play facilities at Eddie Catz.
‘Any woman or child who knows they have been recorded by you or may have been recorded by you is bound to be deeply upset.’
A psychiatric report found Johnson had ‘an established pattern’ of such behaviour, the judge said.
Johnson, who has two children aged 18 and 20, resigned as director of Eddie Catz last September after the allegations came to light.
His wife Maria, 51, remains a director of the company, which has centres in Earlsfield, Putney, Wimbledon and Newbury, as well as a presence in branches of Mothercare in Leeds, Gateshead, Manchester, Solihull and Bristol.
Johnson was ordered to sign the sex offenders register and comply with a sexual harm prevention order for ten years.