A pedophile with a disturbing criminal history has been jailed for 25 months after being caught secretly filming women in a female restroom at the Millburngate shopping centre in Durham city. Kurtis Mawson first attempted to claim he identified as a woman in order to avoid arrest.
Mawson was first arrested the morning of March 5, 2022, after female patrons reported him to police for attempting to take covert video and photos of women using a cubicle by standing on a toilet and leaning over the top of the partition. There were young girls in the washroom who were quickly ushered out by women who had been in the bathroom and spotted what Mawson was up to.
Mawson apparently attempted to hide in the cubicle when police arrived, putting on a “high pitched voice” when police questioned if anyone was in the washroom.
According to Chronicle Live, the prosecutor said that one of the officers climbed on top of a toilet to continue speaking with Mawson, who eventually declared that he was in the women’s washroom because he “identified as a female.”
When police arrested him, they found him in possession of a mobile phone and a digital camera. He had recorded material of women using the toilet. The digital camera contained footage and snaps of unsuspecting women using the toilet.
Mawson’s home was then searched and and a number of digital devices, including two computers, one of which contained a stash of child sexual abuse materials. Among the images and video, 80 were classified as category A – the most serious. There were also an extreme pornographic image of a person engaging in an act with a dog.
Mawson has previously been described by police as a “high risk sex offender,” yet has continuously been turned loose to the streets.
Last year, Mawson was arrested after sexually assaulting a tourist on Durham’s Prebends Bridge. The woman had been taking photos of the local cathedral when she heard Mawson approach, but initially did not pay him any attention as she assumed he was also a tourist. Shortly after, she felt something warm on her leg, and found that Mawson had ejaculated on her before fleeing.
Mawson later went on to breach a sexual harm order and the sex offenders register after establishing three accounts on dating websites Hinge, Bumble and Tinder without informing police.
He also used an alias to set up a profile on gaming platform Steam without telling officers. He called himself ‘Patrick Bateman’ after the fictional character in horror film American Psycho.
Mawson’s case has now attracted international attention after Harry Potter author JK Rowling called attention to the story, captioning it: “That thing only evil, nasty bigots claim happens, and that never, ever happens, has happened. Again.”
Rowling’s post, made on X (formerly Twitter) this morning, sparked backlash from trans activists who claimed the story was “irrelevant” to the gender ideology debate.
“And what exactly does this have to do with trans people?” one user asked, to which Rowling replied: “The paedophile told police he identifies as a woman. You imply he’s not trans. How did you reach that decision?”
But while a number of trans activists insisted Mawson was clearly “faking” his gender identity, others defended his right to identify as he wished.
“So what if she does?” another user questioned, using feminine pronouns for Mawson. “Does someone committing a crime negate their protected characteristics? If so, where do you draw that line? Do we stop upholding the protected characteristics for gay criminals? Or disabled criminals? Do we stop protecting women in prisons?”
Mawson’s quick-thinking strategy of using the UK’s notoriously lenient gender self-identification laws during his interaction with police recalls a similar incident from February of 2023.
As previously reported by Reduxx, a male predator claimed to identify as a “female” after sexually assaulting a woman in the female lavatory of the New Street railway station in Birmingham. When confronted by police, Ian Bullock told officers he had been in the women’s washroom because of his gender identity.
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