Cafe boss who stripped off to greet job applicants escapes jail sentence

David Richards, 53, texted two teenagers aged 15 and 16 and a woman in her thirties asking them to attend an interview at his coffee bar, Rioco, in York city centre last June. But when they arrived on separate occasions, they were shocked to find Richards naked.

Judge Stephen Ashurst sentenced Richards yesterday to a three-year community order with a condition he attends a sex offender treatment programme.

York Crown Court heard that Richards had sent identical texts to each of his victims, telling them what time they should attend the interview. The texts said the cafe closed at 5.30pm so he was likely to be downstairs in the basement so the interviewees should look for him, said Robert Galley, prosecuting.

When the women found Richards in the partially-lit cafe, he was naked and holding his mobile phone but not talking on it, Mr Galley added.

In police interviews, Richards, of Wistow in North Yorkshire, claimed he had been cleaning himself as he had been working in the cafe’s kitchen all day. Richards, who wore a dark suit, striped shirt and purple tie for the sentencing hearing, did not get any sexual gratification from the exposure, the court was told.

After a “brief conversation”, Richards dressed and carried on with the interview. The women unsurprisingly did not take up any job offers as they were left “significantly distressed”.

In mitigation, Chloe Hudson said the family owned a number of cafes and had been struggling financially with “worries about bankruptcy”. “He hasn’t taken a day off work in the last four years and he hasn’t been significantly away from the cafe for the last six years,” she said. “This may well explain why this man who has otherwise been a man of good character has committed these offences.”

The court heard that Rioco is due to close in December. Judge Ashurst added that Richards had suffered “something of a breakdown from a build-up of stress and anxiety”.

Richards had changed his plea to guilty on the day of his trial, admitting three charges of indecent exposure.