A COMPULSIVE flasher who claims to have a rare syndrome which makes him do it has been locked up for 36 weeks.
Lee Stephen Fenwick, 28, was on a suspended prison sentence for earlier similar offences when he exposed himself on a bridge close to the Broughton Retail Park.
He was spotted by a woman on a footpath who believed he was facing children when he was indulging in an indecent act on the bridge. She was so concerned she took a photograph of his car, which she gave to the police.
Fenwick, of Moel Gron in Mynydd Isa, Mold, was traced and claimed he had been adjusting his underwear. But he admitted outraging public decency, which put him in breach of a suspended prison sentence for a series of similar offences in Holywell, Hawarden, Ewloe and Dolgellau.
He was given an eight week prison sentence for the latest offence and 28 weeks of the suspended sentence were activated consecutively.
Mold Crown Court heard those earlier offences occurred when Fenwick, then living in Holywell, was on a community order after he flashed to schoolgirls from his car parked in a street in Mold.
Fenwick’s barrister John Hedgecoe said the previous suspended sentence had been imposed so his client could receive specialist therapy because of the syndrome that he suffered from.
But he had not been given that therapy because funds were not available. However Fenwick had since been told funds could be made available.
Following a break so that could be checked, Judge Niclas Parry was told the probation service would not finance such therapy.
He had, while on the community order, completed a community sex offender treatment programme.
Judge Niclas Parry told him he should be in no doubt everything that possibly could be done to help him had been done.
Fenwick admitted outraging public decency following the latest incident at Broughton at 5pm on August 31 on a footpath running from the retail park to Church Road, Broughton.
Judge Parry said there had been a thorough assessment of Fenwick. He was rightly said to be a high risk of future sexual offending but not a risk of serious harm to the public.
He had, for his own sexual gratification, caused distress to a lone female. The judge said he would not be sentenced on the basis he had exposed himself to children.
Paulinus Barnes, prosecuting, said the woman saw Fenwick looking to one side and heard the sound of children in that direction, but had not seen any. When Fenwick saw her he walked off but was traced thanks to the photograph she took of his vehicle.
Mr Hedgecoe said it was an unusual case. Fenwick was an intelligent man who held down a job and who had been with his current partner for seven months.
The pre-sentence report suggested the offences occurred when Fenwick stopped taking his medication. But Mr Hedgecoe said the medication was for depression, not to stop him offending, and he stopped taking it when he felt better. He had previously been depressed and had considered suicide.
He was a man who wanted help. It was his case he had been told finance could be made available through the probation trust in Cardiff for him to receive therapy from a cognitive therapist to address the syndrome he had.
Mr Hedgecoe suggested an adjournment for that to be double checked but the judge said he did not believe there was any merit in that.
Fenwick is already registered as a sex offender and is subject to a SOPO, a Sexual Offences Prevention Order, banning him from going within 100 metres of any educational establishment or play ground unless he is accompanied by family members.