Predator avoids jail despite being caught on CCTV trying to film teen girl undressing in water park changing room

2 January 2024, 12:18

A predator has avoided being sent to prison despite being caught on camera trying to film a 15-year-old girl getting undressed in a water park changing room.

CCTV footage shows Liam Warlow, 27, hanging around in the unisex changing room of LC Swansea water park in south Wales.

He looks up and down the corridor while standing in the doorway of a cubicle, before running off after trying to film the girl on his phone.

Swansea Crown Court heard he had dried himself and got dressed, but stayed in the changing room after he spotted the girl, who was at the water park with her mother.

He tried to film her under the door, but she kicked his phone away when she saw it.

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Liam Warlow seen loitering in changing area in CCTV footage

Warlow was seen running away after the incident, leaving the water park without saying goodbye to the people he was there with.

He was arrested two days later at his partner's house.

Judge Geraint Walters said: "Having set eyes upon her, you quite purposefully, and with a fair degree of determination, hung about in the changing area - including viewing her through a mirror at one stage - until she entered a cubicle.

"You entered the adjoining cubicle, and while there you used your phone to film her.

"She said the phone was plainly recording and she could see herself on it."

Warlow said he had dropped his phone and it had started recording by itself.

But Judge Walters said: "I would have to be very naive to accept that proposition, as would a jury, had you tried that one on them."

Warlow told police upon his arrest that he could not remember the code to the private part of his phone, which the judge also said he did not believe.

A separate video that Warlow did give police access to appeared to show him masturbating in a toilet stall.

He pleaded guilty to observing a private act for sexual gratification

His lawyer said: "Clearly he is deeply ashamed of what's gone on. Mr Warlow states the impact on the victim must have been horrible."

The judge gave him a six-month jail sentence suspended for two years, which he said followed sentencing guidelines. But he told Warlow that many people would expect him to have handed out an immediate custodial sentence.

Judge Walters told him: "'You set eyes upon her and at that moment decided to see if you had any opportunity to film her in a state, no doubt, of undress.

"Your conduct that day has, for a considerable period of time, blighted you. And it will. You will be on the sex offenders register. You've lost your partner, by the looks of it.

"No doubt in any future relationship you have, you will end up coming under the scrutiny of social services."

Warlow was also put into a 43-day programme to address his sexual enjoyment of filming in public, as well as 45 days of "general rehabilitation".

He was also put on the sex offenders register and made subject to a sexual harm prevention order for seven years.