Ludlow pervert is spared jail over secret filming of women

Andrew Macrae, a former executive at international entertainment company Live Nation had admitted filming up women's skirts using a hidden camera.

Macrae, 43, of Hartfield, Caynham, who was a vice-president Live Nation, amassed almost 50,000 images of strangers for his sexual gratification.

He was caught when an off-duty police officer noticed a pen-shaped camera protruding from a laptop bag as he placed it between a woman's legs on a platform at Clapham Junction station on July 19 last year.

When the officer confronted him on the train to Waterloo, Macrae admitted the pen was a camera.

A search of his marital home in Redhill, Surrey, uncovered a hard drive containing secretly taken images dating back to January 2013.

The images were taken in a variety of places and also featured Macrae wearing some victims' underwear.

It emerged that the married father-of-one had installed a camera in the guest bedroom of his home to film women who stayed over.

Macrae also filmed through a woman's window while she was undergoing a waxing treatment and had taken underwear from another woman's gym bag and taken pictures of them laid out on a desk.

He admitted seven counts of voyeurism for the purposes of sexual gratification and one count of outraging public decency at a previous hearing, and was sentenced at Inner London Crown Court.

Macrae told officers he was "disgusted" with himself, saying he was under financial pressure and his wife was receiving counselling, while a psychiatrist diagnosed him with traits of Asperger syndrome, an acute reaction to stress and features of sex addiction.

Handing him 20 months imprisonment suspended for two years, Judge Jeremy Donne QC said: "This was undoubtedly a sophisticated, organised, planned and long-running campaign of voyeurism, albeit sporadically.

"These offences are rightly regarded with revulsion by the public in general and women in particular.

"Women will undoubtedly feel a need to be protected from such behaviour by the knowledge that the courts will deal with such offenders severely, and men will thereby be deterred from committing such offences.

"On the other hand, you suffer from an illness that can be treated and you have submitted to treatment."

Macrae was barred from owning any covert recording device and any device capable of storing images unless it was made available on request to the police for the next 10 years.

He was also barred from contacting three victims named on the indictment, or any member of their family, and ordered to pay £102 compensation to one victim.

Macrae's contract with Live Nation was terminated following his arrest and he has been forced to sell his family home.

The company said in a statement: "Andrew Macrae was terminated by Live Nation Entertainment in July 2017 following his arrest.

"Live Nation strongly condemns Macrae's acts and is outraged by his offensive and criminal behaviour which has no place at our company, city or the world at large."