Events boss used pen camera to film up skirts

A CONCERT firm boss who took photographs up women’s skirts using a camera concealed in a pen was spared jail because he has an “illness”.

Andrew Macrae, 43, who earned £180,000 a year as vice-president of ticketing and events company Live Nation, amassed almost 50,000 images of strangers for his sexual gratification.

He was caught when an off-duty police officer noticed a pen-shaped camera protruding from a laptop bag as he placed it between a woman’s legs on a platform at Clapham Junction station on July 19 last year. When the officer confronted him, Macrae admitted the pen was a camera.

A search of his home in Redhill, Surrey, uncovered a hard drive containing secretly taken images dating back to January 2013. The images were taken on public transport and at his home, and also featured Macrae wearing some victims’ underwear.

He admitted seven counts of voyeurism for the purposes of sexual gratification and one count of outraging public decency at a previous hearing, and was sentenced at Inner London Crown Court to 20 months imprisonment suspended for two years.

Macrae, whose contract was terminated by Live Nation, told officers he was “disgusted” with himself, saying he was under financial pressure and his wife was receiving counselling. A psychiatrist diagnosed him with traits of Asperger syndrome, an acute reaction to stress and features of sex addiction.

Judge Jeremy Donne QC described it as a “long-running campaign of voyeurism”.