November 2010 Peeping Tom is jailed for treatment refusal A CONVICTED Peeping Tom who had child porn on his computer has been jailed after refusing to turn up for his sex offender treatment programme. Craig Fox, 41, of Mount Pleasant, in Offwell, near Honiton, was sent to prison for six months after admitting breaching his community order for spying on women, including a teenage girl under 18, with hidden cameras. Exeter Crown Court was told on Friday that Fox refused to turn up for a rehabilitation scheme for sexual offenders which was part of his sentence, because he was under financial pressure and it clashed with his work. He had also been aggressive and abusive to his male supervising officer and made an unpleasant remark about the female tutor who would be running the programme. Fox’s defence team suggested he was given a suspended prison sentence and unpaid work in the community, as he had family responsibilities and had committed no further offences. Judge Philip Wassall said this would send out the wrong message to the defendant and other sex offenders. He told Fox: “This breach was not only persistent. It was a gross, willful obstruction of the order made.” The judge also increased the defendant’s requirement to put his details on the Sex Offenders’ Register from five years to seven years, because of the prison sentence. Fox, who was living in Haydons Park, Honiton, at the time of his conviction, was given a two-year supervision order by Judge Graham Cottle at the Crown Court in March last year. The defendant had admitted being a voyeur and also storing hundreds of child porn images on a computer which he said were already there when he found it on a council tip. Judge Cottle ordered him to attend a sex offenders’ treatment programme, a crucial part of the sentence. Fox had pleaded guilty to four offences of possessing indecent images of children and two of voyeurism. Circumstances of the voyeurism of undressed women, cannot be published because it could identify the victims, whose identities are protected because of the nature of the crimes. Fox had filmed the women with hidden cameras and police arrested him after they were alerted by a victim. At the latest hearing, prosecutor Nigel Wraith said: “Fox has attended appointments regularly and the view of the supervising officer is he has on the majority of occasions been pleasant and friendly but there were difficulties when the supervising officer started to talk about the offending behaviour. “Fox responded with abusive and aggressive behaviour when there were efforts to discuss his sexual offending.” Fox has previously formally applied to the court to attend one-to-one sessions, as part of the Sexual Offender Treatment Programme, instead of group ones, at a hearing at the Crown Court. Mr Wraith said: “Judge Cottle said the group sessions should go ahead and he should knuckle down and get on with it. There have been further problems since then.” Kelly Scrivener, in mitigation, said Fox had not been able to attend the first programme when it switched from evening to daytime sessions in Plymouth, because of his job. Fox was told he could wait until the next scheme began in Exeter, a year later, but he was unable to attend as he had difficulties being able to afford time off work to do so. She added he had a good reference from his employer and he had family responsibilities, which were explained to the court. Judge Wassall told Fox that the whole purpose of the previous sentence was to ensure that the defendant addressed his crimes.