A VOYEURISTIC farmer set up a network of cameras in a holiday cottage to film women tourists.
Farmer David Sturgess, who is originally from Abingdon, was today warned by a judge he faced jail for rigging up cameras at his mid-Wales smallholding to secretly film guests.
But he granted Sturgess bail pending pre-sentence reports to allow him to look after his farm animals.
A jury at Swansea Crown Court took just two hours to find the 53-year-old guilty of 12 counts of voyeurism and three counts of making indecent images of children.
The images included women in the shower, changing and using the toilet and were used for his “own sexual gratification”.
The jury heard Sturgess had a conviction for assault on a female 16 or over going back to 1989 at Oxford Magistrates’ Court.
Sturgess hid hi-tech cameras in fake smoke alarms at the three-star holiday cottage he ran in Llandysul in Ceredigion.
When he split from his partner, Teresa Crick, after seven years, she reported him to the police.
They found cameras hidden in two bedrooms, the kitchen, lounge and bathroom when they raided the property in September 2008.
The cameras were linked to TV monitors and recording equipment in the adjoining farmhouse, where Sturgess lived.
The recordings also included footage of a 14-year-old schoolgirl, girls of 17 and two men making love with their partners.
Sturgess, who denied the charges, claimed his former partner had been trying to frame him.
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