Sex pest Captain Rugwash spared jail

A Margate businessman who admitted groping one married woman, exposing himself to another victim and then asking a young teenager to reveal her breasts has been spared jail, to the anger of his victims. At Canterbury Crown Court, Judge Adele Williams imposed a three-year community order on 54-year-old Stephen Bromfield, nicknamed Captain Rugwash after a carpet cleaning company he ran, for three sex offences.

But after the hearing, one of Bromfield's victims said he should have been jailed immediately. "We are not happy," she said. "Some of us are still suffering because of him. The judge should have sent him straight to prison." At an earlier hearing, Bromfield had admitted indecent assault, sexual activity with a child and indecent exposure. Initially he claimed his victims were lying when they reported what had happened, but later admitted their allegations were true.



Alongside the community order, Judge Williams ordered Bromfield, of Leslie Avenue, Garlinge, to take a course to address his sexual problems. She put him under a 7pm-to-7am curfew for three months and ordered him to pay £800 legal costs.The former boss of the Big For Men clothing shop in Margate was made the subject of a Sex Offences Prevention Order, banning him from working anywhere he would come into contact with children under 16.

Sentencing, Judge Williams criticised Bromfield's claims that he was in fact the victim. "You may regard yourself as a victim but you most certainly are not. That is absurd," she told him. She said he had "behaved as a sexual predator" and that he had to recognise that it was his own behaviour that had created victims. "You ignored the alarm and distress that your behaviour was causing your victims," Judge Williams added.