Man boob filmer walks free

1:22pm Friday 16th May 2008

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A PEEPING tom who was sentenced at St Albans Crown Court for secretly filming swimmers' breasts has had his conviction overturned by the High Court after it emerged that he was only focussing on man boobs'.

Kevin Bassett, 44, was given an 18 month supervision order in May 2007 after he was caught with a hidden camera filming swimmers at the Grange Paddock Complex in Bishops Stortford.

During the original trial a witness, who was swimming with his daughter, told how he spotted Mr Bassett behaving suspiciously at the poolside.

The man feared Bassett, from Spalding, Lincolnshire, was focusing in on his little girl and so angrily confronted him.

Bassett, a practising Christian who kept his homosexuality under wraps for years, later confessed to a pool manager that he was filming a topless man.

Passing sentence, Judge John Plumstead, said: "It is by good grace and good luck that you were not lynched that day."

He put him on the sex offenders' register for five years and banned from using recording equipment in public unless it was on display.

But yesterday the conviction was quashed at London's Appeal Court when three judges ruled that a man's bare upper body should not be considered as serious.

The 2003 Sexual Offences Act specifies that private parts' - such as breasts - must be exposed during the act of voyeurism.

Lord Justice Hughes told the court the law referred to "female breasts and not an exposed male chest".

So in simple terms perving over a man's droopy pecs is completely acceptable, while ogling a woman's breasts is prohibited.

The Appeal Court judges ruled that Judge Plumstead had failed to fully deal with the issue of the meaning of the term breasts' when he asked the jury to consider their verdict.

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