Guesthouse owner who recorded boys and men in toilet ashamed of himself, court told

A Peeping-Tom B&B owner hid a spy camera in one of the bedrooms and recorded a guest, a court has heard. Co Down pervert Andrew George Tinsley (45) is facing sentence on 18 sex charges at Antrim Crown Court. The guest was only recorded setting a bag on to the bed at the Coach House B&B, Dromore, the fact that Andrew George Tinsley bought and installed the covert camera demonstraed his intention to commit offences of voyeurism. In addition to the spy camera, Tinsley used an IPhone camera to record boys and men using toilets both in Northern Ireland and during a family holiday in Italy. The married father-of-three, from the Lurgan Road in Dromore, admitted 10 counts of possessing indecent images of children, seven charges of recording a person doing a private act for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification and one count of voyeurism - all committed on dates between July 2018 and January 2019. A prosecutor said Tinsley was caught red-handed using his phone to record a 14-year-old boy using the toilets at CastleCourt shopping centre on January 26, 2019. The boy was in a cubicle urinating when he “became aware of a presence or some sort of movement above him.” “He looked up to see a male’s hand holding a phone over the cubicle wall. He was also able to see it was recording due to the presence of the red dot on the screen of the phone,” said the prosecutor. The frightened boy told his dad who alerted security guards who spotted Tinsley close to other toilets in the centre. Tinsley attempted to flee, pushing other members of the public out of the way, but was stopped and held until police arrived. On his seized phone cops found the footage taken from the guesthouse along with 160 other secretly recorded videos including 20 of boys aged between 10 and 15 using toilets. All of the videos featured males, both young and old. Tinsley told police  he was “highly ashamed of what he had done”. Judge Marrinan revealed that before he was caught in Castlecourt, the police had previously warned him about similar behaviour in another shopping centre. He said it was also “rather troubling” that Tinsley maintained he has no sexual interest in children but defence counsel Taylor Campbell argued that the “primary interest” for the married father-of-three was adult males, submitting that of the 160 videos, only 21 involved children. Mr Taylor also said Tinsley’s wife was staying with him in their “viable” marriage. Freeing him on bail, the judge said he wanted to consider the reports before passing sentence on June 16 which, coincidentally, is Tinsley’s 46th birthday.