Lifeguard who got stuck under changing room partition guilty of spying on naked woman

A teenage lifeguard had to be rescued by firemen when he got stuck under the partition of a changing cubicle after allegedly peeping at a naked woman inside, a court heard. Steven Dickson, 19, was working at the Cockermouth pool last October when he peered under a dividing wall into the cubicle where the married brunette was getting changed. When she shouted that she had seen him he tried to escape by squeezing underneath another partition.

But he got stuck so fast the fire brigade had to be called. And when they arrived to free him he was in such a state they feared he might be having a heart attack. Dickson, of Main Street, Dearham, near Maryport, pleaded not guilty at Carlisle Crown Court to a charge of voyeurism, which alleged that he observed the woman’s “private act” of getting changed for the purposes of his own sexual gratification.



He says he was merely investigating what he thought was a fault in one of the cubicles, and panicked when the woman shouted at him. In evidence, the woman told the jury she was standing naked on her swimsuit, looking for her underwear in her bag, when she noticed Dickson looking at her from below the partition.

“I could just see his face and a lot of hair,” she said. She said she ran out, wearing only a towel, to tell people what had happened, but by then Dickson had disappeared. He had fled and got stuck under a different partition in the changing room. Dickson was found guilty after a three-day trial. He was remanded on bail for reports and will be sentenced on June 29.