A HEATWAVE peeping tom has been jailed for spying on a 17-year-old girl as she slept on her bed naked at 6.30 in the morning.

The horrified teenager woke up to hear the sound of a camera phone snapping and saw a figure peering through a narrow gap in the blinds that covered her ground floor window.

She called her mother who shouted at prowler Kristoffer Roberts, pictured, causing him to flee. He was identified from doorbell video footage and his fingerprints were found on a beer bottle he dropped at the scene.

Roberts was already a registered sex offender, having previously been jailed in 2014 for using a phone to take 657 ‘upskirt’ pictures or videos of unsuspecting women.

He went on to attack his girlfriend so violently while high on drink and drugs that she was left traumatised and unable to carry on her training as a nurse.

Roberts, aged 29, previously of Drum Way, Heathfield, Newton Abbot, but now of Abelia Close, Paignton, admitted voyeurism, strangulation and battery.

He was jailed for a total of 22 months and put on the sex offenders’ register for a further seven years by Judge Peter Johnson at Exeter Crown Court.

He told him: ‘The victim of your voyeurism was a 17-year-old girl lying in her own bed asleep and naked because of the temperature. She became aware of someone standing by the window and of a clicking noise being made by a mobile phone taking photographs.’

Miss Felicity Payne, prosecuting, said the girl’s mother called police during a spell of very hot weather in August 2020 to report that a prowler had been taking pictures of her daughter through a small gap in the blinds.

He was identified through CCTV footage and arrested wearing the same baseball cap. He also dropped a beer bottle at the scene with his fingerprints on it.

Miss Payne said Roberts put his partner’s neck in an arm lock and strangled her three times with increasing force after she told him to leave her home in Torquay because he was drunk.

She was so badly affected by the ordeal and by his behaviour during their relationship that she failed nursing exams and is now appealing to be allowed to continue her degree.

Mr Martin Salloway, defending, said Roberts’s problems arose from his abuse of alcohol and drugs to mask the psychological effects of a violent and unhappy childhood. He is now addressing all these issues in custody and is truly sorry for the harm he has caused.