Locations
Cherry Road, Chester, Cheshire, CH3
Description
A MAN from Chester has been locked up after being caught trying to film a girl using the women’s toilets at a busy shopping centre.
Dorniel Nica, who is already a registered sex offender, was spotted using his phone camera to look under the next cubical, with the girl believing he was performing a sex act on himself.
The 28-year-old tried to claim innocence, despite being identified by police using facial recognition technology.
But the courts saw through the creep’s lies, and he is now in jail for the disturbing offence.
Nica was sentenced at Warrington Magistrates’ Court on Monday, November 21, having been convicted after trial following his not guilty pleas.
These were to charges of voyeurism and attempt to observe a person doing a private act, while he conviction put him in breach of a suspended sentence order.
Vincent Yip, prosecuting, explained how on October 2, a teenage girl had been in a cubicle of the public toilets in Golden Square Shopping Centre after feeling sick.
While in a cubicle, she saw a hand holding a black iPhone coming from the underneath the cubicle next to her.
She believed the phone was recording and that there had been a man in the cubicle next to her as she could hear what she thought to be a man masturbating.
The girl’s friend had gone to get her a drink of water, and when she returned they both left the toilet area, but they did not see the man.
They then approached two police officers at Warrington Bus Station and told them what had happened. The officers went to the toilets and searched the area but found no trace of the man.
After making further enquiries, the officers checked CCTV at the shopping centre. It showed a man entering the female toilets at 5.12pm and leaving at 5.55pm.
The man was then seen wandering around the shopping centre before leaving.
Officers took an image of the man from the CCTV and submitted it through Retrospective Facial Recognition software.
The search returned a match for Nica, and officers set about making enquiries as to his whereabouts.
Nica was arrested the following morning at an address in Warrington on suspicion of voyeurism, with officers seizing a mobile phone in his possession.
According to the charges he was convicted of, the defendant’s offences were ‘for the purposes of obtaining sexual gratification’.
His previous suspended sentence order was imposed on September 21 for intentionally exposing his genitals so that someone would see them in Chester, as well as for stealing £329.94 worth of men’s clothing from TK Maxx in Solihull.
Magistrates in Warrington said that the offences were so serious that only a custodial sentence could be justified.
This was due to the victim’s young age, his ‘similar previous offending’ and that fact that the offences took place in a public location.
Nica, of Cherry Road in Chester, was sentenced to 36 weeks in prison and ordered to comply with sex offender notification and registration requirements for 10 years.
He was also handed two restraining orders prohibiting him from contacting two girls for five years and ordered to pay a surcharge to fund victim services of £187.
Following the sentence, PC Wendy Whitehead said: “If it was not for the bravery of the victim for approaching the first police officers she had seen, we may not have been able to achieve the result we have done.
“Thanks to the new technology available to us, we were able to identify Nica quickly and effectively, allowing us to make further enquiries and ascertain his whereabouts.
“This led us to get justice for Nica’s victims and put a prolific offender behind bars and off the streets of Cheshire.
“This result reinforces our commitment to tackling violence against women and girls. We will prevent, deter and take action against anyone who preys on women and girls.
“I hope this result will provide reassurance to the public, and perhaps it will allow others to have the courage and report incidents such as this to us.”