Teacher in Leeds avoids prison for Voyeurism

Case study summary

Our client, a primary school teacher from Leeds was charged with voyeurism after filming a colleague while she was using the staff bathroom. He faced a genuine risk of prison but our specialist lawyers ensured that he received a community order instead.

Case study

Our client was a primary school teacher charged with voyeurism. It was alleged that he had planted his phone on the inside of a rubbish bin in the staff bathroom and used his connected smartwatch to film a staff member while she was using the facilities.

Terrified by the prospect of a custodial sentence, he contacted our specialist sexual offences lawyers and instructed us to act on his behalf. He admitted that he had committed the offence but insisted that this was a one-off, major lapse in judgement and clearly showed significant remorse for his actions.

Our client was a new father and the sole earner in the household. Any potential prison sentence would therefore not only ruin his life, but would have had a devastating impact on his family's wellbeing too. In order to ensure that the best result was achieved, our legal team began putting together detailed mitigation on our client's behalf. This included character references, as well as letters from his family explaining the impact that a prison sentence would have on them. In additional to this, we instructed a specialist barrister to act on his behalf at court and advocate based on the mitigation package that we had out together.

Ultimately, we were able to convince the court not to send our client to prison. Instead, they passed a community order which included unpaid work and rehabilitative programmes.

Our client avoided a custodial sentence and was able to continue to support his family and put this incident behind him.