Changing-room voyeur sentenced

A Whakatu man caught secretly videotaping a young woman as she undressed in a Westshore Beach changing room has been sentenced to 350 hours' community work and a year's probationary supervision after months of legal debate over what offence he had committed.
Peter Allan Cox, 37, ultimately pleaded guilty to a charge of committing an indecent act likely to insult or offend, in filming a young woman in the changing rooms late in the afternoon of January 29 this year.
When he appeared in the Napier District Court yesterday, he was told by Judge Geoff Rea it was "unpleasant" and "disturbing" offending which will have left the complainant feeling violated by what had happened. The young woman spotted the camera after she had changed out of her beach wear into her underwear, the Judge said, summarising the events.
She fled the changing rooms, as Cox, realising his voyeurism was about to be exposed, also fled, leaping into a car and driving away.
Police later stopped him and the evidence of his day at the beach was found in a camera in the vehicle he was driving, with images not only of the complainant but also of other people changing, including a male.