Peeping Tom falls out of wardrobe as he spies on amorous couple

Michael Hoyle, 20, hid in a bedroom wardrobe while Jake Clancy-Winfield, 21, had sex with the girl at a friend’s house.

Prosecutor Oliver Thorne said the incident happened when Clancy-Winfield invited the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, to a flat in Wakefield, where she spent an hour-and-a-half chatting with the men.

Clancy-Winfield asked the girl to go to bed with him shortly after he had had a whispered conversation with Hoyle, who had left the room claiming he was going to the toilet, Leeds Crown Court heard.

Once persuaded to go to the bedroom the girl asked for the lights to be turned off, but Clancy-Winfield refused.

The girl was horrified when the intimate session was interrupted by a man stumbling out of the wardrobe and she immediately tried to cover her dignity with a pillow.

Mr Thorne told the court: “She heard a bang and Hoyle fell out of the wardrobe.”

Following the incident, in July 2009, when Clancy-Winfield was 19 and Hoyle was 18, the girl reported the matter to the police. In interview, Clancy-Winfield said he had been unaware he was being watched until halfway through the incident, but carried on anyway.

Hoyle told police he had gone into the wardrobe to get a phone and hadn’t intended to watch the session.

Sentencing the pair to a 12-month community order with supervision, Judge Jennifer Kershaw QC said: “As I think you are by now aware, your behaviour on that day in 2009 was not only criminal, it was also insensitive, coarse and cruel.”

The pair, both from Wakefield, were each also ordered to complete 180 hours of unpaid work and pay court costs of £150. They pleaded guilty to voyeurism at an earlier hearing. A third defendant was acquitted after a trial.

John Wilkinson, mitigating for Hoyle, who is on benefits, and Simon Reevell, for Clancy-Winfield, asked for their clients’ guilty pleas and good character to be taken into account.

Mr Wilkinson said Hoyle apologised to the complainant straight after the incident, had turned his life around and stopped drinking heavily with friends.