Gran filmed urinating on Trump golf course loses damages claim

Sheriff rules woman not entitled to compensation

My message for Donald Trump is treat people with respect and dignity. CAROL ROHAN BEYTS

A Montrose grandmother who claimed damages after a worker photographed her urinating at Donald Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf course said she is “relieved” despite losing her case.

Carol Rohan Beyts, known as Rohan, 62, sought £3,000 in damages from Trump International Golf Links Scotland, claiming staff breached data protection laws by filming her when she was caught short at the Menie estate course.

A sheriff ruled she should not have been photographed, but that she was not entitled to compensation as her distress was not caused by the company’s failure to register under the Data Protection Act.

Sheriff Donald Corke said the criminal case brought against her, which was later dropped, was frivolous and warned: “Officious bystanders taking pictures of females urinating in the countryside put themselves at real risk of prosecution under public order or voyeurism”.

Ms Beyts, a long-term campaigner against the course, had told the small claims hearing at Edinburgh Sheriff Court she suffers from bladder problems and squatted in sand dunes on a walk through the course on April 11 last year, only to be “shocked” when police told her she had been filmed.

In his ruling, Sheriff Corke found Ms Beyts had hidden to go to the toilet and did not think she would be seen, but was under surveillance by three men, one of whom took a picture of her instead of giving her privacy.

He said he found Ms Beyts “credible and reliable, notwithstanding her public stance against the development at Menie” and preferred her evidence to greenkeeper Edward Irvine, who he described as evasive.

He said although she was distressed, there was no causal connection between her distress and the firm’s failure to register under the Data Protection Act, and so her claim for damages failed.

Asked if she had a message for Mr Trump, Ms Beyts said: “My message for Donald Trump is treat people with respect and dignity, and you will get treated with respect and dignity.”