A man who committed sex acts under clothing in front of teenage girls in Carlisle while on bail has been jailed.
Samuel Ramos, 27, was initially witnessed by a care worker in a city building on February 20 to be exposing himself through the window of a nearby upper storey property.
Ramos was then seen to commit further similar offending inside Carlisle’s Primark store on two different dates.
On February 28 he was spotted by a 15-year-old girl who was with a friend. The girls had been followed around the premises by Ramos.
In an impact statement that girl said she had been on a shopping trip to regain her independence after suffering difficulties, but told how the incident in the shop had really set her back.
On March 2, Ramos was back in Primark and seen on CCTV engaging in similarly lewd conduct near oblivious shoppers by a security guard monitoring footage.
A week later there was a further incident on a Carlisle street as Ramos carried out a copycat crime in front of two 13-year-old girls as they walked to school.
“They ran into the school in an immediately distressed state and crying, and reported the matter,” prosecutor Brendan Burke told Carlisle Crown Court today.
Ramos had been arrested after the first incident, and committed the next three offences while on police bail. He admitted one charge of exposure and three of committing acts outraging public decency.
Defence barrister Anthony Parkinson, giving mitigation, said Ramos had served the equivalent of a six-month prison sentence on remand. He had completed a raft of courses in custody but none which sought to reduce the risk of further sexual offending.
Mr Parkinson suggested Ramos and the public in general would be best served by him being spared immediate imprisonment and offered intense rehabilitation work.
The judge, Recorder Mark Ainsworth, said he was presented with a very difficult decision.
But in view of Ramos’s very concerning conduct he concluded that appropriate punishment could only be achieved with an immediate 18-month jail term.
Ramos, of London Road, Carlisle, was made subject to the sex offender notification requirements and strict terms of a prevention order, both for 10 years.
