A SERIAL pervert has been banned from every female toilets in the land after being caught spying on women in public conveniences for a fifth time.
His latest victim, a 16-year-old girl using the ladies at Tesco in Accrington, spotted Haben Mihretab’s spiky hair over the top of the next cubicle, Burnley Crown Court was told.
And when the girl, and her partner, confronted the 22-year-old later, he begged them not to report him to police.
Mihretab had been arrested twice before, in Wigan and Blackburn, for voyeurism.
Prosecutor Sara Haque said CCTV caught the defendant going into the female toilets at the supermarket and leaving 37 minutes later.
In that time, 18 women and three children had used the conveniences, she told the court.
Mihretab, of Lydia Street, Accrington, had pleaded guilty to observing a person doing a private act, at a previous hearing before Blackburn magistrates, and had been committed in custody for sentencing.
Jailing him for 20 weeks, Judge Nicholas Barker said: “Clearly you planned out what you were doing and you had done this before.
“Furthermore you had been in the toilets for some considerable period of time.”
The judge also imposed a sexual harm prevention order, for an indefinite period, prohibiting Mihretab from entering any female public toilets.
Judge Barker told the defendant that if he breached the order he could be sent to prison for that act alone.
Miss Haque told the court that the defendant had previously been reported for carrying out similar offences at the Moon Under Water pub in Wigan and the town’s North Western station, in 2017. He was jailed for 24 weeks then.
Later he was also arrested for spying on women in the toilets at Ten Pin Bowling in Blackburn. Magistrates jailed him for 12 weeks on that occasion.
Miss Haque when she first spotted Mihretab watching her she shouted out and he left. The girl and her boyfriend later saw him outside the town’s Wilko store.
The court that he begged them not to report the matter to police and even offered to let the boyfriend punch him in the face.
But the victim took photos of Mihretab and these, along with CCTV footage from the store, led to the defendant being recognised by a detective involved in his Blackburn arrest.
Daniel Howarth, defending, said his client was an asylum seeker, originally from Eritrea, who had no friends or family in the UK and led an isolated life.
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