Terror of the GIMP
A sleepy Somerset village. A pervert who’s stalked it in a rubber suit for four years, peering into kitchen windows at midnight and preying on teens and housewives. Now the woman who took the first picture of him relives the...
THE last time a crime in the Somerset village of Claverham made headlines it was worthy of a plotline in The Archers.
Tipped off by a team-mate that a man had been spotted acting suspiciously in the cricket pavilion, an off-duty policeman left the pitch and swung into action to catch the thief redhanded stealing a mobile phone.
That was five years ago and since then an outsider might have been forgiven for thinking that this rural community to the south-west of Bristol was something of an idyll.
Indeed, even when news broke earlier this week about the activities of a man caught on camera in the village dressed head-to-toe in a skin-tight black gimp suit, many saw it as nothing more than a humorous prank.
‘I love it when English eccentrics, warm summer evenings and rubber fetishists coincide,’ joked one observer on social media. Another wrote: ‘I had a dream where my bike inner tube came to life and killed me — and it looked like him.’ A third simply observed: ‘I just properly laughed at this.’ But for the residents of Claverham and Yatton, the neighbouring village, the activities of Gimp Man, as he has come to be known, are no laughing matter.
For starters there’s the impact the incident has had on Abi Conroy, the 23-year-old woman who was unfortunate enough to cross paths with the individual while on a late-night walk nine days ago.
‘It’s not just a man jumping out at me going “boo”,’ she recalled. ‘He kept coming towards me and was touching his groin, grunting and breathing heavily. As I tried to take a step back he was right in front of my face and he put his leg forward. I was just trying to assess the situation in my head quickly. I thought: “This is it, I’m going to get attacked.” ’
Thankfully Abi escaped physically unscathed. But her ordeal has left her so petrified she is now too scared to walk around the village. And what has emerged since she chose to publicly raise the alarm is that she is not alone.
Earlier this week Avon and Somerset Police revealed that since last November they had received no less than 14 reports of a man approaching people in the area while wearing disguises. As well as the rubber suit, a clown outfit has also been spotted.
‘In some of the incidents the offender is said to have performed indecent acts,’ police said in a statement.
But villagers have told the Daily Mail that sightings of Gimp Man in fact first began as long as four years ago.
These included women who have caught the suited individual peering through their windows in the middle of the night, his breath misting up the glass. He was also seen suggestively rubbing himself on grass. One young man even claims to have tried to tackle the suited man after chancing upon him as he walked home from the pub one night. A fight ensued but Gimp Man escaped.
With this history, many are asking why it is only following publication of Abi’s photograph earlier this week that police appear finally to have taken decisive action — arresting not one but two men on suspicion of indecency offences.
Even then, both those arrested have since been released on bail, prompting a fresh round of concerns about whether or not police have got the culprit.
As one villager put it: ‘So it’s still not safe — because we don’t know if he’s actually been caught yet.’
Given everything that’s been going on it is hardly surprising that all the talk this week in Claverham and Yatton has been about one thing and one thing only — especially given the distinctive nature of the outfit the individual was photographed wearing.
Typically made of skin-tight black rubber or leather, such garments are designed to enclose the wearer from head to toe — hands, feet and face included. This one had red eyeholes and a grinning mouth that had been stitched into the material, further adding to its disturbing appearance.
The clothing is often associated with a sexual fetish in which the wearer of the suit — the ‘gimp’ — assumes a submissive role.
It’s certainly not a mainstream costume to be seen wearing in public, let alone on the quiet streets of Somerset villages.
Indeed, discussing the latest developments at a parish council meeting earlier this week, there was palpable confusion with some present mistakenly referring to the outfit as a ‘glimp’ suit.
‘It wasn’t an agenda item but came up under Any Other Business as so many of us had seen something on TV or heard something on the radio or read it in the papers first,’ said Christopher Jackson, parish council vice chairman.
‘I had to explain to those present there was one consonant too many in the word they were using and it should be pronounced “gimp”. I didn’t want to labour the circumstances in which someone might wear one either.’
That misunderstanding aside, those present expressed their surprise that the police had not made more of the matter earlier.
‘I want to know more about the background to all this,’ said 73-yearold parish councillor Jill Iles. ‘How long has it been going on and how seriously were the police taking it? We have all been kept in the dark.’
Other villagers say that, for several years now, the presence of this threatening figure has been a matter of concern. ‘A lot of people have been affected by Gimp Man,’ said one local resident. ‘ Some people, including children, have been given quite a fright by just seeing him lurking in the shadows at night.
One young boy, about 14 or 15 at the time, was walking home when he saw him loitering near his house.
He was able to run home and alert his dad who gave chase, but the man in the costume was able to escape — clambering through fields and hedges.
Another teenage boy was at home playing on his PlayStation when he heard a tapping at the window.
When he turned to look he saw the Gimp Man right outside. He also went to chase him but again he just vanished.’
Another woman in the village had a number of sinister encounters.
‘He would often be standing outside her front window in the middle of the night,’ the resident said. ‘On a number of occasions she went downstairs in the early hours of the morning to get a glass of water and when she switched the light on he was there, outside her window.
‘It’s the kind of scene you’d expect in a horror film, not a quiet village — it’s the last thing you expect to see in the middle of the night when you’re half-asleep.
‘It was very concerning for her, she was very worried that his behaviour could escalate — her young children were sleeping upstairs.’
According to a Facebook group dedicated to local matters, there have also been a number of recent sightings.
‘A couple of weeks ago he chased a terrified 17-year- old boy down the road and also on the same evening appeared at a ground-floor window staring in, arms aloft (in the gimp gear), at around midnight,’ one contributor wrote.
‘He was making the groaning/heavy breathing noises. It was a petrifying experience for the resident who was sitting next to the window watching TV at the time. It was utterly terrifying. The police were called.
‘He has been around for several years but his behaviour is clearly escalating. The residents on the road (including many young children and single people living alone) are very frightened.’
While the incidents do not appear to follow any particular timetable,
‘He was moving towards me, breathing heavily’
many are said to have taken place on roads or at houses towards the edge of the two villages, near to farmland. Some surmise that this is no coincidence, because whenever Gimp Man has been challenged or chased the open ground has provided an easy escape route for him.
How many of these incidents in total have been reported to the police is unclear, with the force saying they only have details to hand going back to last november.
And those figures were only released following the most recent incident in which the individual was caught on camera for the first time.
on the night in question — July 11 — Abi Conroy was taking a late evening walk through Claverham, something she often did to clear her mind before going to bed. She and her wife Pip had moved to Somerset from Birmingham, hoping to enjoy a quiet life in the country.
‘i don’t go at the same time every night but it is around the same hour,’ she told the Mail. in the past, she says, she has had a sense that someone was watching her — but had never actually seen anyone.
on this occasion Abi, who works as a barber, thought she had spotted something by the side of the street.
She had turned on the torch on her phone and had the camera app ready to take a photo. ‘i looked up to see someone charging at me in a full black rubbery suit and managed to take a picture,’ she said.
‘when i saw the stitching around the mouth and the red eyes i was just like: “oh my God.” ’
The man blocked her path and then, as she stepped to the left, moved to block her again. Fearing the worst, she pushed him away from her, at which point a friend drove past in a car, almost hitting him as he fled. They both ran after him.
‘we kept chasing him and he tried going up a driveway but the light came on so he started running through bushes,’ said Abi.
By then she had alerted Pip to what had happened. She called police, speaking to an officer who told her: ‘oh, i think we’re going to get Gimp Man tonight.’
Pip, a 22-year-old carer, added: ‘ The officer said it’s been an ongoing issue for the past four years — he’d let himself into people’s gardens and has been seen humping their grass or breathing on their window sills, strange things like that.
‘He said this was the first time he’s actually made contact properly, other than jumping out and scaring people. They said it had been quiet for six months and then all of a sudden they started to have a few more phone calls.’
Police used a helicopter and dogs to search for the prowler but were unable to find him.
Although unhurt, Abi, who has suffered from anxiety in the past, says the incident has left her ‘struggling’ to cope.
‘it’s terrifying,’ she said. ‘i don’t feel like i can even work at the moment. i’m a barber and every male that i get i’m going to find it weird until i know the police have got this man.’
Some relief came on Monday when police announced they had arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of indecency offences. This was followed by the arrest of a second man, in his 30s, on the same grounds. Fields in the area have been searched, but police refused to say if a costume had been recovered.
Both men have since been released on bail pending further investigation.
The Mail knows the identity of the younger man arrested but has decided not to name him. Locals describe him as a quiet man from a very religious family that is well respected locally.
Abi and Pip, who have been married a year, said they had chosen to speak out and share the photograph, against the advice of police, because if they had not and something had happened to someone else they would not have been able to forgive themselves.
Last night Pip said that while they are glad police had finally acted, they were disappointed not to have been kept informed of what was happening.
‘it feels like they’re just arresting people to show they’ve been doing something,’ she said. ‘They didn’t even have the decency to call me and tell me these people had been released. They are not considering Abi in all of this — she is absolutely petrified.’
Last night a spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police said: ‘we appreciate how the series of incidents in the Claverham and Yatton areas has caused concern among the community.
‘we hope local residents are reassured by the increased patrols in the area and the two arrests that we’ve made since the most recent incident.’
of course, whether or not this is the end of the story, only time will tell.
‘It was like a scene from a horror film’