Upskirting prosecutions double in second year of new voyeurism legislation

The CPS said it was a “disturbing pattern of behaviour” with a total of 46 men and one teenage boy prosecuted for 128 offences under the Voyeurism (Offences) Act between April 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021.

According to CPS analysis, 15 of the men prosecuted for upskirting since last April were simultaneously charged with other sexual crimes – including child abuse, sexual assault, extreme pornography and wider voyeurism offences.

Shops, particularly supermarkets, remain by far the most common location for upskirting to take place, accounting for 36 per cent of offences since last spring.

Streets, parks, and public transport or connected areas made up the majority of the remaining locations where crimes occurred.

There were 16 offences where victims were identified as teenage girls, including pupils in school uniforms.

CPS evidence also shows that some men were taking “extensive measures” to capture images and videos of women without their consent, hiding cameras in shoes or shopping baskets and using photography apps.

In one case, two men who arranged a visit to a shopping centre to upskirt women together and swapped covert images over WhatsApp were also found to have been sharing indecent images of children.

Siobhan Blake, CPS national lead for sexual offence prosecutions, said: “Despite strict social distancing guidelines over past 18 months, it seems offenders have not been deterred from violating women’s privacy in a most degrading manner as they go about their daily lives.

“These are disturbing patterns of behaviour, with our analysis showing many men are also committing other serious sexual offences, including child abuse.”

She said the CPS was now encouraging anyone who is a victim or witness of upskirting to immediately report it to the police.

“Not only will the CPS treat your complaint seriously, you may also be helping to protect the public from dangerous sexual predators,” she added.

Gina Martin, campaigner, speaker and writer, said: “From the moment I started collecting stories from victims and survivors I could tell upskirting wasn’t something that happens in a vacuum.

“It seemed to me that it was part of a wider continuum of violence and that often it can be a gateway behaviour to more violent forms of assault, or a habitual assault that runs parallel.

“Our need to neatly think of these acts as separate is part of our problem – they are not. I hope the prosecutions from the Voyeurism Act show us that no sexual offence is ‘minor’ or ‘everyday’.”

She added that the Voyeurism Act has shown that every report is critical in not only holding an offender to account, “but in many cases a repeat and violent offender, too”.

In the two years after the legislation came into force on April 12, 2019, 63 defendants have been charged with 175 offences of operating equipment under clothing without consent and recording an image under clothing without consent.

The CPS said this covers only finalised cases, with the vast majority resulting in conviction after guilty pleas.

In one case, 55-year-old school bus driver Robert Woolner was jailed for 30 months last year after being caught in an undercover police child grooming operation. Officers subsequently found upskirt videos on his phone of schoolgirls leaving the bus he was employed to drive in Hertfordshire.

In another case, 52-year-old Sean Toscanni was reported to police after a staff member at a Samsung store spotted disturbing images on a phone he had taken in with a query and recognised him as a security guard at a nearby branch of H&M. A police examination of the device in July 2019 found he had been ‘upskirting’ customers in the Newcastle store’s changing rooms and uncovered evidence of child sexual abuse. He was jailed for 38 months.