Locations
Fishguard Road, Llanishen, Cardiff, CF14
Description
Keir Hazlehurst, 33, used both his phone and a spy camera positioned in a way that his unwitting victims were unable to tell they were being filmed.
The videos of his victims came to light after he showed a photo of a woman on a toilet to a friend who later reported him. In total police found 43 still images taken from videos, which had been deleted, of three women with the youngest being 16 years old. They also found two images of a fourth woman which had been taken at the Celtic Manor hotel in Newport.
A sentencing hearing at Cardiff Crown Court on Thursday heard father-of-two Hazlehurst, who managed a fish and chip shop, carried out the offences in 2018.
Prosecutor David Pugh said: “The defendant showed [a friend] a video and told him it was humorous. “The video showed [a woman] on the toilet with her trousers down and showed part of her thigh. It was clear that she did not know she was being filmed. “[The friend] stopped watching the video and felt uncomfortable about it.”
Police later attended the defendant’s home address in Llanishen, Cardiff, and seized electrical equipment including his mobile phone. When the phone was seized police found images of three women who were pictured on the toilet, topless, and in a state of undress.
They also seized a Fuji camera which contained two images of a woman at the Celtic Manor hotel in a state of undress. On a laptop they found search terms relating to indecent images of children but no images were found on the device. Hazlehurst remained silent during his police interview but later pleaded guilty to two counts of voyeurism.
In a victim impact statement read out to the court one of the defendant’s victims said her life had been “changed forever”. She said: “My social life has been affected and I feel unable to leave the house and feel uncomfortable going out. I don’t want to speak to people as they might have found out about what had happened and might be talking about me.
“It makes attending the gym or any other sporting activity impossible and even at home I have to pull the blinds and shut the curtain to bathe. “This has changed my life and I no longer have the confidence to go anywhere. I want to get back to how I was before and not feel any of this pain.” Defence barrister David Pinell said his client had shown genuine remorse for his behaviour and was “visibly upset” when he heard about the impact his actions had had on his victims. He said Hazlehurst was willing to take part in rehabilitation courses and to try and understand the underlying cause of his offending.
Sentencing, the Recorder of Cardiff Judge Eleri Rees said the defendant’s actions were driven by his own sexual gratification. She added: “You can see from the victim impact statements the effect it has had on these women to discover their privacy had been violated in this gross manner. “All of them feel humiliated by the way you behaved and have the fear those images will be shared. “But I am persuaded there is real evidence of remorse, motivation, and engagement with rehabilitation in your case.”
Hazlehurst, of Fishguard Road, was sentenced to 36 weeks imprisonment suspended for two years.
He was ordered to carry out 80 hours of the Horizon programme, made subject to 10 days’ rehabilitation activity requirement, and ordered to complete 80 hours unpaid work as well as paying £810 in court costs. The defendant was made subject to a sexual harm prevention order and will remain on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.