A CONVICTED sex offender has been jailed after he was caught fondling himself inside a store changing-room at Cheshire Oaks shopping park.
An off-duty police officer raised the alarm after witnessing Christopher John Williamson naked from the waist down touching himself.
Police arrested Williamson, 46, as he tried to flee the North Face store at Cheshire Oaks, magistrates in Chester were told.
The former landscape gardener pleaded guilty to indecent exposure and West Cheshire magistrates jailed him for 21 weeks and ordered him to sign the sex offenders’ register for a further seven years.
Rob Youds, prosecuting, said: “At about 3pm on January 2, an off-duty policeman noticed the defendant in the changing cubicle with the curtain part open and could see Williamson was not wearing any underwear or trousers.
“The witnesses say he initially thought this was odd, but then a short time later he could see that Williamson was holding his scrotum, covering his genitals.
“Williamson was stroking himself while looking through a gap in the curtain.”
As he tried to flee Williamson told the witness “If you just let me go I will be out of here. I don’t live around here”, Mr Youds said.
Williamson, of Mary Rose Court, Southsea, Portsmouth, Hampshire, had three previous convictions for indecent exposure along with a conviction for sexual assault.
He was listed on the sex offenders’ register. Williamson denied the offence and said he never wore underwear and had not done so since childhood.
He changed his plea to guilty on January 8.