Cotton On: Matthew Toms jailed for recording girl in change room
A 35-year-old man copped a spray from a teen girl after she busted him sneaking his mobile phone into her cubicle while she was changing in Cotton On.
Penrith
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A 15-year-old girl kicked a change room door and told the pervert behind it “f*** off, stop recording me” after she caught him sneaking his mobile phone into her cubicle.
Matthew Toms, 35, of Willmot, was charged with intentionally record an intimate image without consent after the incident at the Cotton On at Westfield Penrith in September.
He appeared in Penrith Local Court on Tuesday where he was sentenced for the matter.
The court heard the victim, who can’t be named for legal reasons, entered the change room at about 12.15pm on September 22 last year to try on a variety of clothes while her mother waited outside.
Toms entered the change room next to her shortly afterwards and activated the video recording on his phone.
He then positioned his phone against a grey backpack so it was filming the victim’s change room and moved the backpack’s strap to get a clear view.
The girl later told police she noticed the phone while in a state of undress, saw herself in the frame of the camera, and saw the red square indicating the phone was recording.
She quickly got dressed and told her mother who went to inform staff. While she was doing that, the victim returned to Toms’s cubicle, kicked his door and said “f*** off, stop recording me”.
Toms remained in his cubicle for another five or six minutes before returning his T-shirt to a staff member.
By this stage, the victim’s father had arrived at the store and told Toms “you’re not going anywhere”.
During a police interview, Toms denied taking a recording of the victim, but police later found the footage after seizing his phone.
In court, Toms’s lawyer told Magistrate Geoff Hiatt that her client had some mental-health issues that led to his offending.
Magistrate Hiatt said the offending was at the mid-range of objective seriousness and that a sentencing assessment report had found him to have a high risk of reoffending.
He sentenced Toms to 15 months in jail with a non-parole period of seven months.
Toms will first be eligible for release in May next year.