A voyeur whose flat overlooked the home of two young women filmed them walking around unclothed, a court heard today.
Alan Mulholland, 54, was caught when police raided his Hove flat after his IP address had been flagged up during an investigation into child porn.
As well as thousands of indecent pictures and films of children, detectives found footage of his unsuspecting neighbours.
Mulholland, who now lives in Church Road, was previously jailed for a similar offence in 2012, but today a judge spared him an immediate prison sentence after hearing rehabilitation courses had improved since then.
Prosecuting at Lewes Crown Court today, Jennifer Gray said: “Police found voyeuristic images – seven photographs taken by the defendant of two young ladies who I believe lived in the same flat, behind the defendant’s previous address.
“They were completely unaware that he had been taking these photographs.
“They had been, quite properly, wandering around their own home address with no clothes on.
“He had obviously seen them and then took photographs of them for his own personal gratification.”
The raid took place on New Year’s Eve last year. At interview, Mulholland admitted possessing all the images found on his devices and was charged with eight offences, six of which related to the child porn and two to the voyeuristic photographs.
The child pornography charges related to six images and 148 films in category A (the most serious category), 129 images and 82 films in category B and 2,697 pictures and 152 films in category C.
He was given a series of concurrent sentences, the longest 14 months, for the indecent images, and two concurrent sentences of ten months, to run consecutive to the others, for the voyeurism.
The total length of the prison sentences was 24 months, and these were suspended for two years, with an 18 month supervision order to include 30 rehabilitation days and undertaking a specialist programme for sex offenders.
He was also ordered not to own any devices capable of taking photographs or accessing the internet without informing the police and making them available for inspection – or from being in the company or taking pictures of children without their parents fully informed permission.
Sentencing, Judge Martin Huseyin said: “The voyeuristic offences have raised harm because the victims were recorded in their own home and have been made to feel uncomfortable in their own homes.
“Voyeurism has long term effects on people because they lose the feeling of safety in their own homes.
“Some people think the indecent images cause no harm, but there’s been an explosion of exploitatino of the girls who are being filmed, sometimes by people who know them very well, sometimes by their own family members, and those images being swapped to give people sexual kicks and being consumed by people like you in, it has to be said, quite a sad way.”
Mulholland first appeared at Brighton Magistrates Court on September 3 and pleaded guilty at Lewes Crown Court on October 1.
This nonce needs prison not rehab…….he was let off before in 2012 with child offences.i suppose it helps his mother is ajudge