Whitby holiday couples spied on using a disguised alarm clock

Jonathan Waugh, 52, the man behind the “disgusting and depraved actions”, was jailed for 12 months on Tuesday after a judge heard how couples had their most intimate moments recorded.

Waugh set up covert recording equipment in the main bedroom of the cottage. He would then play back the images on a widescreen TV in a cottage he also owned opposite.

York Crown Court heard the discovery of the surveillance-type equipment, disguised as an alarm clock, was made by a guest who had gone to bed during the day after becoming ill.

The guest and his wife were reported to have felt violated and their relationship to have suffered as a result of Waugh’s actions.

Richard Gent, prosecuting, told how Waugh would check that it was couples who would be using the main bedroom before setting up the device, which worked on a motion sensor, and would then meet and greet his guests in person.

A couple and their two children had booked the cottage between November 7 and 11 last year.

Mr Gent said the husband was taken ill and retired to bed. The husband then noticed something unusual about the alarm clock and examined it to find a memory card installed inside.

He went straight to the police station and when quizzed, Waugh made admissions that he had been addicted to pornography since his 20s. He had paid £600 for the equipment on the internet and had used it to record couples for 13 months between October 2010 and November last year.

He added that he updated the equipment, which could record in the dark, with a larger memory card and watched the resulting visual and audio recordings for his own sexual gratification.

Rupert Dodswell, mitigating, said Waugh had voluntarily been seeking treatment for his problems.

Waugh, a former broadcasting engineer of Huddersfield, had previously pleaded guilty to two charges of voyeurism.

He also asked the court to take into consideration six further offences of installing recording devices and six of making recordings.

Recorder David Bradshaw ordered Waugh to sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years and made him the subject of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order for the same period.