A THORNTON man is looking at a jail term after he was found guilty of exposing himself and masturbating in front of high school girls at Cardiff and Edgeworth over a four-month period last year.
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Chester, who remains on bail, faces the maximum of two years in jail on each of the six charges when he is sentenced in July.
The prosecution case against Chester was a circumstantial one and relied on tendency and coincidence evidence, victims’ descriptions of the man they had seen, clothing found in Chester’s car and home and the circumstances of his arrest on December 7, 2017.
But ultimately, Magistrate Michael Barko was able to piece together all the evidence and was satisfied that the same man had committed the majority of the offences at Cardiff and two at Edgeworth.
And Mr Barko said he was also satisfied that man was Chester. However, Mr Barko acquitted Chester of three other charges, including an offence from 2009 when a man exposed himself to a girl at Fletcher, at the conclusion of the hearing.
Chester always appeared between 8.30am and 9am – just when his victims were walking to school.
Always dressed in either a long-sleeve high-visibility shirt, a business shirt or a high-visibility orange vest, he would hide in bushland outside or on the way to high schools at Cardiff South and Glendale until an unsuspecting school girl approached.
And then he would appear from his hiding spot in the bushes or shout out to get the girl’s attention.
When the girls looked his way the man would have his pants lowered or his fly down to expose his penis and he would be masturbating.
Sometimes he would groan, other times he would say “sorry”.
Police put a tracker on his car and followed him to a spot near where the other offences were committed on December 7, 2017. When they found him he had his pants unzipped.