KFC voyeur spared jail sentence for toilet videos

A VOYEUR who used his phone to video people using the toilets of the KFC outlet he worked in was spared jail yesterday.

Judge Brian Sherrard told Richard Cooper, 25, “all right-minded people would be horrified by his “gross intrusions”.

But added the public could best be protected by him serving two years’ probation “in order to address your deficiencies”.

Antrim Crown Court heard Cooper, from John Street, Ballymoney, secretly videoed his wife using the toilet in their home.

But last June she checked the phone and was “shocked” when she found the recordings.

A lawyer said Cooper had put his mobile inside or on top of a bin in the toilets of a Coleraine KFC outlet, so he could “view people coming in to use the bathroom”.

She added the images included a youngster aged five or six, a teenage schoolgirl, a mother changing a baby’s nappy, and a staff member.

The court heard since the offences came to light, Cooper had lost his job, marriage and contact with his young child.

A lawyer said while the accused carried out his phone recordings in a “surreptitious and seedy way”, he “accepts he has done wrong but now has begun to move on with his life in the best way he can”.

Cooper, who pleaded guilty to four charges of voyeurism for his own sexual gratification between December 2016 and January 2017, is subject to a Sex Offences Prevention Order for the next five years.