Nathan Corey Nixon sentenced in Rockhampton District Court

A court had heard how a teenage girl now suffers anxiety when she goes out after a man took a photo up her skirt while she was shopping with her family because he thought she was good looking and ‘had to look’.

A man has been jailed after he took a photo up a 15-year-old’s skirt while she was shopping with her family.

A court has heard the ‘freaky’ details of how a grown man used his phone to get a photo under a girl’s dress while she was out doing a grocery shop with her family.

Nathan Corey Nixon, 36, pleaded guilty in Rockhampton District Court on Thursday (June 22) to one count of indecent treatment of a child under 16.

The court heard the victim, a 15-year-old girl, was out shopping with her father and brother in Biloela on May 7 last year.

The trio and Nixon were “completely unknown” to each other.

When the family was at Woolworths Nixon went up behind her and sneakily put his phone under the girl’s knee-length dress to take a photo.

Nixon was seen by the girl’s father who tried to stop him running away.

The girl’s brother then chased Nixon but wasn’t able to catch him.

Crown prosecutor Luke Smoothy told the court Nixon deleted the photo from his phone to get rid of the evidence.

Nixon later went to the police station where he denied taking the photo, saying he was taking a picture of a special in the store.

But his lies were caught out when he was shown CCTV footage of himself committing the offence.

“He said ‘I saw a good looking girl and I had to look up her skirt’,” Mr Smoothy told the court.

Mr Smoothy told the court the girl felt “violated” after the incident and now felt anxiety going out shopping and that her confidence had also been affected.

He said Nixon had a “fairly lengthy” history of “not particularly serious” offending, but it did include a sexual assault offence.

Nixon’s barrister Julie Marsden told the court her client had suffered with mental health issues in the past and that he began drinking at a young age.

She said he was raised in the state’s west by his alcoholic father.

Ms Marsden said at the time of the offence Nixon had been drinking and smoking marijuana and that alcohol was a problem for him.

She said as a result of the guilty plea Nixon would be a reportable offender.

Judge Jeff Clarke took into account Nixon’s plea of guilty and that it came at an early opportunity.

Judge Clarke described the offending as “quite freaky”.

“What you did was to satisfy your own petty, sexual interest … I assume your purpose was to masturbate to it later,” he told the court.

“What you did, selfishly acting out in this way, has had, quite understandably, far reaching impact on this girl and her family unit and her sense of safety and security has been violated.”

Nixon was sentenced to nine months imprisonment, wholly suspended for 18 months after serving two months.