Serial Peeping Tom claimed he was in ladies' toilets because he was wearing wrong glasses

A Peeping Tom who claimed he was in the ladies’ toilets because he was wearing the wrong glasses has been jailed. ‘Compulsive’ voyeur Roberto Collins has breached an ASBO banning him from spying on women seven times. In the most recent incident he was caught by a cleaner standing on top of a toilet in the Arndale Centre, Manchester, so he could peer at any woman who used the next cubicle. Minutes earlier, Collins had been chased from a toilet on the floor below.

The 51-year-old has now been jailed for 13 months by a Manchester Crown Court judge who said the public needed protection from his ‘disgusting’ behaviour. Collins’ lawyer said the roots of his compulsion were in a difficult childhood, when the toilets ‘were a place of safety for him’. The court heard that Collins, of Moss Side, came out with a string of bizarre excuses following his arrest on December 30. On that morning a cleaner checking toilets was stunned to find him standing on a toilet and looking into the next cubicle, which was empty. Asked what he was doing, he said ‘sorry love’, and made off. Police were alerted and caught up with him nearby.



Graham Robinson, prosecuting, said: “Taken to the police station and interviewed he said he’d gone into the ladies by mistake and gave some nonsensical story about having a sore backside he needed to scratch, and that’s why he had to stand up.” Interviewed later by the probation service, Collins claimed a fault with his glasses stopped him from seeing the signs properly, and that he needed a new pair. Collins was first convicted of public nuisance and given an ASBO banning him from ladies toilets and Manchester University in 2005, when he was seen looking under the dividing partition of a toilet at a faculty building.

Three years later he was jailed for nine months for breaching the ASBO three times. He breached it another three times in 2010, 2012, and 2013, when he was caught hiding in a swimming baths locker. David Thomson, defending, said: “The defendant accepts he has a problem - it’s a compulsion. In his own words, he simply can’t help himself. There’s never any suggestion he’s made any physical contact.” Sending him down after he admitted breaching his ASBO, Judge Martin Henshell told Collins the courts had ‘tried everything’ to help him change his ways. “These offences would cause considerable distress to women,” the judge added.