September 2014 Hexham pervert who filmed children in hospital toilet has sentence slashed A voyeur who set up a hidden camera inside a hospital toilet has had his jail term cut. John Adams filmed more than 50 people – including children – using the toilet at Hexham General Hospital and was only caught out when staff at a shop where he sold his music player discovered the footage. Adams, 54, of St Wilfrid’s Road in Hexham, Northumberland, was jailed for 28 months at Newcastle Crown Court in May after admitting six counts of voyeurism and three of making indecent photographs of children. But his sentence has been cut to 18 months by judges sitting at London’s Criminal Appeal Court, who said the original term was “too long”. The court heard that, in April last year, Adams sold an MP3 player to a branch of Cash Converters in Newcastle, and, after discovering there was digital footage from a public toilet stored on it, staff contacted police. An investigation revealed the footage was taken from a camera that had been installed in a single-cubicle, unisex toilet in Hexham General Hospital. The court heard the toilet was used by outpatients who may have been ill or vulnerable, and more than 50 people had been filmed, including children aged between ten and 14. Officers recovered a digital camera from Adams’ house, along with a number of memory cards and USB devices on which footage had been stored, although the majority of it had been deleted and was recovered by technical experts. The footage had all been filmed between 2009 and 2012. Adams, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, admitted he had set out to capture image of adult women for his own sexual gratification. The court heard he had suffered depression following his wife’s death in 2011, and that his medical condition would make custody harder for him to cope with. His lawyers argued his jail term was over the top, saying the Crown court judge had imposed the highest available sentence for such offences. Allowing his appeal, Mrs Justice Simler said that, while the offending was serious, the overall term imposed was “excessive”. Sitting with Lord Justice Treacy and Mr Justice Sweeney, she added: “Taking account of all the aggravating features, and making allowance for the available mitigation, we conclude that 18 months would have been appropriate.”