Changing room camera pervert blames Viagra substitute and wife's menopause

A pervert who secretly filmed a mother getting changed with her five-year-old son in a Sheffield leisure centre has escaped a prison sentence after a judge said jailing him wouldn't provide any treatment to stop him offending in future. Neil Smith, aged 57, of Victoria Road, Old Town, Barnsley, spied on his 31-year-old victim with a video camera from a changing cubicle at Hillsborough Leisure Centre.



Sheffield Crown Court heard Smith pointed the camera under the cubicle, moving the lens "to get a better view". The camera's memory card also contained covert footage of five other women getting changed, taken the same day.

Smith turned to voyeurism after his wife began going through the menopause, the court was told, and claimed his "thinking was blurred" due to taking Kanagra pills, which are similar to Viagra. He was fined for committing the same offence at the Doncaster Dome in 2004. He looked through a hole in a cubicle wall and watched women getting changed.



He will serve a three-year community order with a supervision requirement and must attend an accredited sex offender programme. He will also be subject to a sexual offences prevention order, banning him from communal changing rooms in leisure centres, sports centres or swimming pools anywhere in the UK.