‘I was tightening my drawstring’: Man with long history of public masturbation faces fresh charges
A man with a long history of public masturbation – including an instance where he masturbated in front of a Tasmanian MP in her office – has pleaded guilty to a fresh batch of lewd offences. LATEST >
Police & Courts
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A Hobart man with a long history of public masturbation – including an instance where he masturbated in front of a Tasmanian MP in her office – has pleaded guilty to a fresh batch of lewd offences.
Sean Patrick Mahoney, 33, has been masturbating publicly in Hobart locations since 2018 – including on buses, in public toilets, in Centrepoint, Eastlands and the Wellington Centre, in an op shop, Woolworths, St David’s Park and a dentist.
He has numerous convictions for indecency and prohibited behaviour.
Mahoney appeared in the Supreme Court of Tasmania on Thursday, with Justice Gregory Geason hearing that in 2022, he masturbated on a Metro bus, inside his track pants, in front of teenage school girls in Sandy Bay.
After alighting the bus, the girls, distressed by the offending, told a teacher and saw a school counsellor.
On a separate day, he put his hands in his pants and masturbated while looking at two women in Collins Street, Hobart.
Later the same day, he masturbated in the doorway of the Icon shopping centre in Murray Street while in front of a woman.
It was captured on CCTV footage.
When questioned later by police, Mahoney admitted the person on the CCTV footage looked like him, but he definitely hadn’t masturbated, and since getting out of prison just months prior, he had been “on his best behaviour”.
He said instead of masturbating, he had more likely been “tightening the drawstring on his track pants”.
Given the fresh offending occurred while Mahoney was on a suspended prison sentence, there is a possibility that sentence will be activated.
Justice Geason questioned what kind of treatment he was receiving, so the Hobart community could be protected into the future, but also to give Mahoney the opportunity to change his behaviour and become a law-abiding citizen.
He said questions remained over Mahoney’s mental health, and his behaviour couldn’t just be put down to “evil”.
“Longer and longer sentences don’t necessarily achieve anything. You’re just warehousing a person,” he said.
“When someone behaviours in a particular way such as this, over and over and over again, there must be something at play.”
Defence lawyer Brittany Clark said Mahoney had spent much of his last stint in prison at the Wilfred Lopes mental health facility, but that his schizo-affective disorder could not explain the masturbating behaviour.
On the fresh offending, he has pleaded guilty to three counts of indecency, two counts of prohibited behaviour and one count of breach of bail.
Mahoney was remanded in custody, to return to court on May 5.
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