Description
A convicted sex offender who planted a spy camera in the ladies' toilet of the new James Bond set has been jailed for 16 months.
Peter Hartley, 50, used a miniature camera triggered by motion and vibration, and propped it behind a toilet at Pinewood Studios to try to record women on June 21.
Hartley, who was a maintenance man at the Studio, was caught after a freelancer noticed the light reflecting from the lens similar to 'light reflecting off the face of a watch' and dismantled the grill.
He was jailed today at Aylesbury Crown Court, Buckinghamshire, and will be on the sex offenders register for ten years.
Prosecutor Daniel Wright told the court the device was marketed as a 'spy camera' and the offender used a piece of tape to cover its LED light to stop it being detected.
Hartley has a history of similar offences starting in 2008 and told his public protection officer at the Met Police he had reoffended, this morning.
He has convictions for placing cameras in a Coventry council building in 2009 and a leisure centre's changing rooms in 2016.
The Uxbridge man has a total of three convictions for eight offences, although at his first conviction he asked for 113 offences to be taken into consideration.
He revealed his reasoning for the incident to the police: 'I suppose sexual gratification is the main reason - as Ive learned from my past whenever something bad or stressful happens I act out.'
And he added how his partner had been in hospital undergoing tests for cancer when he committed the offence at the Studios which had started filming for the 57-year-old British spy franchise in April this year.
He later pleaded guilty to one count of voyeurism at Milton Keynes Magistrates Court.
In a victim impact statement, the young woman who found the camera said she had needed mental health treatment and had suffered from acute anxiety.
She said: 'I am not eating or sleeping properly and I dont feel safe anywhere - I check the whole house for cameras. I dont doubt that I will check every bathroom I go into for the rest of my life.'
The victim added how she believes the defendant shows no remorse and 'must have seen the damage to the victims last time'.
Hartley had completed a sex offenders rehabilitation programme only eight months before reoffending and he claims this 'opened a Pandora's box' in his mind, the court heard.
Jailing him, judge Francis Sheridan said the victims life 'has been devastated by a dirty-minded individual who preys on women using the lavatory where he can compromise them'.
He said he hoped the victims trauma did not continue: 'If it does, it means the perpetrator or voyeurism has won and that cannot be allowed to happen in a decent society.'
The incident was an 'utter betrayal' of Hartley's employers and was carefully planned.
Irfan Arif, defence for Hartley, said the defendant was remorseful and he believed his offending was linked to being sexually abused as a child. The 'urge' to 'record women like this' cannot be explained and the defendant 'needs further help and guidance'.
He added Hartleys elderly father had recently died and he was made his mother's sole carer.