No court for Tory in upskirt arrest
CCTV plea councillor told he will not be prosecuted
A FORMER Tory councillor who became one of the first people in Britain to be arrested on suspicion of “upskirting” has been told he will not face prosecution.
Lee Hawthorne, 40, was nicked last July after police issued an appeal featuring a CCTV image of a man seen at a discount clothing store.
Hawthorne was suspended by the Conservative Party pending the outcome of the police probe. He resigned from Gloucester
City Council, where he had continued to sit as an independent, last month.
His arrest came only weeks after upskirting – using a camera or a mobile phone to take sleazy photos – became a criminal offence in April 2019. It passed into law following an 18-month campaign during which Tory MP Sir Christopher Chope gained notoriety for delaying it.
Sir Christopher, 72, blocked a Private Member’s Bill to make it an offence in June 2018, saying he was not defending upskirting but that he had made it his life’s work to prevent opposition parties writing Government laws.
The campaign was begun by writer Gina Martin after two men took pictures up her skirt at a festival and police could not do anything about it.
Hawthorne, who has worked as a manager at the Alzheimer’s Society and a director of a dementia campaign group, was arrested after an incident at a branch of TK Maxx.
He had sat on the council’s overview and scrutiny committee as well as its planning group.
The Crown Prosecution Service did not comment.