Cleaner jailed for voyeurism and sex offences - Welwyn Garden City

15/03/2013

When police arrested a cleaner for secretly filming a woman office worker as she used the toliet, they uncovered evidence of his sordid activities going back 10 years.

Darren Bilton had been setting up secret recording devices in cubicles and bathrooms to film adults and children. Sometimes he would position his own mobile phone with its inbuilt video camera behind toilet rolls.

After seizing Bilton's home computer, Hertfordshire Police found clips that Bilton had secretly filmed. He had gone into supermarkets and, after placing phones in shopping baskets, had secretly filmed up the skirts of women in the aisles. But officers also found movie clips he had taken showing young teenage girls.

Bilton, 44, of Hedge Brooms, Welwyn Garden City, appeared at St Albans Crown Court today, Friday, 15 March 2013, to admit six offences of voyeurism, four offences of sexual activity with a child, indecency with a child, taking indecent photos of a child, and penetrative sexual activity with a child.

The court was told police found clips of 36 unidentified adults using toilets.

Bilton's secret activities were exposed in July of last year when a woman office worker at a company in Welwyn Garden City, where he was working as a cleaner, went into a toilet cubicle he had just left and spotted his phone, which had been partially hidden.

Michael Speak prosecuting for Thames and Chiltern Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the woman had been shocked to see her own legs on the screen of the phone and she challenged him and the police were called.

Judge Steven Gullick jailed Bilton for a total of seven years and three months.

He was made the subject of a sexual offences prevention order (SOPO) and his name will remain on the sex offenders' register for the rest of his life. He was also disqualified from working with children.

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