Hundreds of reports of flashers and voyeurs in South Yorkshire, locations include Primark and Metrodome

The figures have been obtained through a Freedom of Information request to South Yorkshire Police, after a number of high profile appeals by police across South Yorkshire following incidents in the county, including ‘voyeurs’ in changing rooms at Primark, Sheffield, and Barnsley Metrodome.

Statistics show in 2022, there were 83 cases of flashers investigated in Sheffield. These consisted of incidents recorded as indecent exhibition, or committing or conspiring to commit an act outraging public decency. They also showed 23 reports of voyeurism in the city.

Figures for the rest of South Yorkshire showed there were 23 flashers in Barnsley, 44 in Doncaster and 25 in Rotherham.

Barnsley saw 15 cases of voyeurism recorded, while there were 15 in Doncaster and six in Rotherham.

Voyeurism hit the headlines last year when disgraced Sheffield nurse Paul Grayson, then aged 51, of Woodstock Road, Sheffield was jailed for 12 years, convicted of charges including 14 counts of voyeurism, while working at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital.

Sheffield Crown Court heard he had filmed up the gowns of unconscious women patients. He was slated by a judge for ‘bringing shame on an honourable profession’. He was also struck off as a nurse.

Police appeals last year included an investigation in August after two women were left ‘shaken and distressed’ after a man allegedly attempted to secretly film them as they used a changing room cubicle at the Primark store in Sheffield city centre. Officers also investigated in December, after a woman reported seeing a mobile phone camera above her as she was getting changed at the Metrodome in Barnsley.

Flasher incidents during 2022 included a report of a man exposing himself to a passing woman on Wolseley Road, Sharrow, as she walked to work in the morning, which was the subject of a police appeal at the time. And last November police put out an appeal after a series of flasher incidents were reported around Thorpe Hesley and Scholes, Rotherham.

Campaign group End Violence Against Women and Girls last year called for more research into the response to ‘lower level’ sex offences and whether responses contributed to a sense of impunity in men who go onto commit more serious crimes.