OAP SPIED ON GIRLS WITH TV-LINK
TWO VICTIMS YEARS APART GROOMED WITH DRUGS AND PRESENTS
A PENSIONER has been locked up for spying on two girls using a hidden camera linked to a television set.
Graeme Bertram, 72, “groomed” one of the victims by giving her cannabis and amphetamine.
He molested another victim, aged 11 or 12, by touching her innapropriately.
Bertram was convicted by a jury at Leicester Crown Court of two counts of voyeurism, with hidden cameras allowing him to observe the girls in another room, two counts of supplying class B drugs and one count of sexual assault, on various dates between 2004 and 2015.
Bertram, of Hill Rise, Birstall, had denied the offences.
During the trial, prosecutor Mark Watson said the defendant took an interest, at different times, in three girls he encouraged to visit.
He would offer them cigarettes, alcohol and give money and gifts.
Mr Watson said he was grooming them and “would often discuss sexual matters”.
One of the victims went to play a DVD in the defendant’s house and, flicking through channels, found an image on the screen of a room she had been getting changed in.
She found a Union Jack box with a hole and a concealed camera directly linked to the television in the lounge. The discovery led to the police being called.
Mr Watson said: “The secret camera was set up to spy on her and you can draw the conclusion he was sexually interested in her.
“The defendant said it was a security camera for his yard but the cables were not long enough and that was why it was in the box.
“He claimed he had no sexual interest in her.”
An earlier spying incident came to light from years earlier, when a girl, aged 11 or 12, went to the defendant’s house.
Mr Watson said: “His sexual interest in her began and he gave her gifts and money. She was treated like a person beyond her years and he bought her underwear.”
She also saw an image of the room she had changed clothes in appear on his TV screen and it did not “click” with her at first.
The defendant told her he had been watching Big Brother and “nothing was happening”. She discovered a camera in a drawer.
James Keeley, mitigating, said: “There’s only so much I can say. Please take account of his age – he’s 72 years old – and his lack of previous convictions. It is the first time he will be in a prison.”
Judge Philip Head said Bertram had supplied cannabis and amphetamine to one child in her early teens on at least one occasion although she described receiving the class B drugs on several.
The judge said it was all “part of the grooming process”.
The first voyeurism offence he said had involved “elaborate planning and execution”.
The judge said Bertram had also discussed sexual matters with one victim, a “shy and insecure girl” using sexually explicit fantasy letters.
He said: “There’s a striking feature in their victim personal statements where they say what you did has continued to adversely affect their lives, in all cases.”
Bertram was jailed for a total of five years.
He was placed on a seven-and-ahalf-year restraining order banning any contact with the complainants.
Bertram was made the subject of an indefinite sexual harm prevention order and will have any future addresses logged on a sex offenders’ register for life.