A MAN committed lewd sex acts under his clothing in front of three distressed teenage school girls in Carlisle during a spate of perverted offending while on bail.

Samuel Ramos, 27, was first witnessed by a care worker in a city building on February 20 to be exposing himself through the window of a nearby upper-storey property.

“She was particularly concerned,” prosecutor Brendan Burke told Carlisle Crown Court, “that during the course of that he appeared to be fixing his attention looking up the street towards a primary school.”

It had been half-term that week, and no children were reported to be in the area.

But Ramos was caught as he committed further similar offending inside Carlisle’s Primark store on two different dates. On February 28 he was spotted by a shocked 15-year-old girl who was with a friend after both had been followed around by Ramos.

In an impact statement the girl said she was on the shopping trip to regain independence after suffering difficulties, but told how the incident in the shop had “really set her back”.

On March 2, Ramos was back in Primark and seen on CCTV engaging in similarly lewd conduct near obvious other shoppers by a security guard monitoring footage.

And a week later there was a further incident on a Carlisle street with Ramos carrying out a copycat crime in front of two 13-year-old girls walking to school. “They ran into the school in an immediately distressed state and crying, and reported the matter,” said Mr Burke.

Ramos had been arrested after the first incident, and committed the next three offences while on police bail. He admitted one charge of exposure and three of committing acts outraging public decency.

Anthony Parkinson, giving mitigation, said Ramos had served the equivalent of a six-month prison sentence on remand. He had completed a raft of courses in custody but none of these were aimed at reducing the risk of further sexual offending.

If sent to prison and released on post-sentence supervision, any work done with him would not come close to that being proposed by the probation service if he was allowed to return to the community.

Intense rehabilitation work would best serve Ramos and the public in general, suggested Mr Parkinson. He added: “It is clear he acts on impulse. It is clear he was unable to resist the impulse on these four occasions. This is a case that is crying out for rehabilitation-based work with him so that the next time these impulses arrive he has a better and lawful way of dealing with them.”

The judge, Recorder Mark Ainsworth, said he was presented with a “very difficult” decision. But in view of Ramos’s “very concerning” conduct he concluded that appropriate punishment could only be achieved with an immediate 18-month jail term.

Ramos, of London Road, Carlisle, was made subject to the sex offender notification requirements and strict terms of a prevention order, both for 10 years.

Speaking after the sentencing hearing, PC Rebecca Lynch, of Cumbria police, said: “We take all reports of sexual offences seriously and work hard to do our best for all victims of such crimes.

 “I hope that this case encourages victims of such crimes to report incidents such as these to the police. Victims will receive support from sensitive professionals.”