A Rugby man broke into women’s homes at night to steal their underwear which he then hoarded in his bedroom, a court heard.
Graham Lees pleaded guilty at the crown court in Leamington to four charges of burglary and two of stealing more underwear from washing lines near his Rugby home.
Lees, aged 32, of Victoria Road, Rugby, who also admitted a further charge of producing cannabis, was jailed for a total of four years.
Prosecutor Warren Stanier said that last July Lees broke into a terraced house in Clarence Road, Rugby, while the occupiers were away.
“He took a games console and a camera which were later found at his home, and a quantity of ladies’ underwear which is a theme which runs through his previous offending and these offences.”
Lees burgled the same address in the early hours on September 4 – at a time when a teenage girl was asleep on the sofa in the living room with the family dog.
The girl then woke to see him standing just two metres away from her, and when she challenged him he made no reply and walked out.
Mr Stanier said the incident has had such a traumatic effect on the family they have decided to move.
In October Lees targeted another house in Clarence Road, breaking in during the afternoon.
When the woman who lived there with her two daughters got home she reported the break-in, but at first did not realise items of underwear had been stolen.
Later that month she was asleep in bed when Lees broke in at 6am by removing the board which had been put over the window he had damaged in the earlier burglary.
She was disturbed by her bedroom door being opened and Lees walking into the room – but he quickly left when she screamed.
When she spoke to a neighbour the next day, that woman realised the break-in was probably connected to instances when she had not been able to find particular items of underwear which she suspected had been stolen from the washing line.
Her housemate had also suffered similar thefts, so they reported their suspicions to the police.
And when Lees was arrested their underwear was among a number of bags of similar items recovered from his bedroom, and officers also found the remnants of 12 cannabis plants he had grown for his own use.
Robert Hodgkinson, defending, said one psychiatrist who has examined Lees ‘thinks he suffers from full-on obsessive compulsive disorder’ – but a second puts his behaviour down to ‘a mental disorder of sexual preferences, namely a fetish, a sexual attraction to women’s underwear since the age of 14.’
Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2012 1:58 pm
