Navy voyeur filmed naked sailors

Opie was a Petty Officer on the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean

A navy rating who cut holes in the ceiling and walls of changing rooms so he could film female shipmates has been jailed for two years.

Paul Opie, 36, used his mobile phone to record video clips of his colleagues as they used quayside changing rooms at HMS Drake naval base in Plymouth.

He was caught after a child pornography inquiry, the city's crown court heard.

The petty officer admitted seven counts of voyeurism and eight unrelated counts of possessing child pornography images.

Opie, an engineering mechanic who served on the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean, will be sacked after 18 years in the Royal Navy.

The outrage and distress which your victims felt is both obvious and understandable Judge Francis Gilbert QC

The court heard that he used his knowledge of the building and his engineering skills to find a space inside a wall, from where he filmed the clips over six months.

Andrew Maitland, prosecuting, said police found the recordings on Opie's computer when they investigated child pornography case allegations.

Officers also found 56 child pornography images on his computer.

Nick Lewin, defending, said: "He cannot understand how he found excuses for his behaviour which he knows to have been desperately wrong."

Judge Francis Gilbert QC ordered Opie's name to be put on the sex offenders register and banned him from working with children.

"The outrage and distress which your victims felt is both obvious and understandable," he told Opie.