A MOBILE phone pervert who took photographs of women while they were on the lavatory at a fast food restaurant has been banned for life from going near ladies' toilets and possessing a camera.

Rasik Patel, 25, used his mobile phone camera to take pictures from over the top of cubicles at Pizza Hut, in Hartlepool, only weeks after he was punished for similar offences in another part of the region.

Patel had been given a two-year community rehabilitation order by Teesside magistrates for doing the same thing in the female toilets of a Sainsbury's store in Stockton, and had received a caution last May for taking a picture up a woman's skirt.

Magistrates in Hartlepool heard yesterday how he was working as a security guard in the Tesco supermarket in Billingham, near Stockton, when he crouched down to take the indecent picture of a customer.

Patel, of Wrensfield Road, Stockton, admitted five charges relating to the Hartlepool incidents, which were committed on February 17 -trespassing with intent to commit voyeurism, two of voyeurism observing, and two of voyeurism recording a private act.

Magistrates yesterday also ordered him to be placed on the sex offenders' register for five years, complete a three-year community rehabilitation order and attend a sex offenders' programme.

Chairman of the bench Russell Hart told him: "You come in front of us today with some very serious offences, which clearly are disturbing to the public and particularly disturbing to the two ladies to whom you quite wrongly and disgracefully behaved.

"Our objectives are many and varied: to punish, to prevent re-offending, to deter offending, to make reparation and to protect the public."

Mr Hart said sentencing options included custody, but gave Patel credit for co-operating with police and entering early guilty pleas to all the charges.

Adrian Morris, in mitigation, earlier told the court: "Short, sharp shock is not going to be the remedy here."

Mr Morris also described the prosecution calls for life bans on using mobile camera phones, cameras and camcorders and from going near women's toilets as over the top and said his client's actions had not caused serious psychological harm.

The solicitor likened Patel's pictures to paparazzi snaps of celebrities, but said the difference was his client wanted to use them for his sexual gratification in private, while tabloid newspapers made their photographs available for general consumption.

On February 17, Patel hid in the middle of three cubicles in Pizza Hut. Twice in 40 minutes he looked over the top to take photographs. The first woman thought it was a child playing a prank, but the second trapped Patel in the toilets until police arrived.