Masturbation illegal without fantasy's consent

Man jailed for fantasising on his neighbour

A fruit salesman was sentenced to six months in prison for masturbating while thinking of his neighbour without her consent, a court said yesterday.

Adam Ferguson, 36, was arrested in April 2007 in his South Kensington flat, where he was said to have been performing sexual intercourse with himself, between the months of August 1994 and April 2002, although he allegedly took breaks in order to catch up with other significant tasks. Ferguson confessed that, for most of these acts, he had stimulated himself using a memory he had of his neighbour Geraldine Hayes, 47, whose semi-bare feet he had accidentally seen while she was sunbathing, in the summer of 1994.

Mrs. Hayes was unaware of the fact that, all those years, she had been Ferguson's sexual muse, but when he greeted her with a cheerful "Hello, Geraldine. Hey, I recognise these flip-flops!" in the morning of 3 April 2007, she started suspecting him. Then, she stopped suspecting him for two weeks and started suspecting him again on 20 April 2007, when she called the police.

"I feel abused. It is a terrible feeling to know that someone has been thinking about you in such ways," said Mrs. Hayes, mother of three, vixen, and yoga teacher. "If I had known, I would have never sunbathed in my garden in the first place." Her husband Mark, whose first name he wished to remain secret, refused to comment.

"Although having sex with oneself is no crime, it is the duty of this court to emphasise that engaging non-consenting parties in one's erotic fantasies is a serious sexual offense," said presiding judge, Sir Justice Justin, upon announcement of the sentence.

Ferguson's attorney, court-veteran Sir James Holmes, was satisfied with the sentence and encouraged his client to see the positive side. "It is fortunate that no material such as photographs or video were involved," he said. "If that had been the case, we would be facing a possible conviction of two years of imprisonment or more." Allegations that Sir Holmes's fine mood had less to do with the case than with his recent renouncement of wheat were dismissed as flippant.

The Ferguson trial refueled the debate about prosecution for unauthorised use of memories and other mental images for sexual stimulation purposes, an issue first discussed in 2004, when Hollywood actress Diane Rosewood sued her pool attendant for harassment. The star claimed that her employee saw her in her bikini and used that image for his erotic stimulation, with his wife, later the same evening.