A veteran gardening expert who has appeared on several British television programmes has been charged with Voyeurism after allegedly spying for sexual gratification.
Steve Brookes, 55, will appear in court in January after having been charged with seven counts of of observing a person doing a private act. The Leamington Observer reports the celebrity and author of bestseller The Greatest Gardening Tips in the World observed individuals who were leasing the flat in the attic space of his bungalow.
The Gardener’s world presenter who provided expertise for radio and television including BBC, ITV and Channel 4 stands accused of spying on his lodgers while they were “doing a private act knowing that the person did not consent to being observed for your sexual gratification” between 2015 and 2016.
If convicted, Mr. Brookes can expect a fine, or a sentence of up to two years imprisonment, depending on the severity of the case. According to the wording of the law which was enacted with the 2003 Sexual Offences Act, voyeurism can run to observing individuals who reasonably expected privacy if they are naked or covered only in underwear, using the lavatory, or “doing a sexual act that is not of a kind ordinarily done in public”.
Professionally, Mr. Brookes may be better known as ‘Mr. Rotivator’, a name used in his work with schools, encouraging young people to take an interest in gardening in the 1990s. The professional gardener won the Royal Television Society Award for a Channel 4 series on gardening in 2000, a garden writer’s guild award for his radio programme work, and has presented ITV’s Gardening Time.
Just this year he was a presenter at the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show and has worked with the BBC since 1993.
The Stratford Herald reports the television personality is also active in the local community, supporting charities as well as being a former chairman of the Stratford in Bloom committee as well as helping organise the annual Christmas fair.
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