A ‘Peeping Tom’ has been sentenced for looking through a hole in his toilet door trying to see a young girl taking a bath in Dalgety Bay.

The girl became suspicious about David Cosgrove and so put her phone against the hole to video what he was doing at the other side of the door.

Cosgrove, 48, now of Loanhead, appeared for sentencing at Dunfermline Sheriff Court.

He admitted that on April 2, 2020 at an address in Dalgety Bay, he observed a female by peering through a hole in a bathroom door without her permission whilst she was a state of undress and preparing to take a bath.

Depute fiscal Azrah Yousaf said the female is now aged 19 and had not reported the incident when it occurred more than three years ago.

The background to the incident was that Cosgrove had removed the lock from the bathroom door and there was a small hole left in the door.

The girl said she was going to have a bath. She was starting to get undressed in the bathroom when Cosgrove walked in saying he wanted to brush his teeth.

He did so and then left the bathroom but the girl was suspicious about the way he was behaving.

She decided to use her phone’s video recorder and put it against the hole in the door.

The image showed Cosgrove squatting down attempting to look through the hole.

“She got a fright and stopped filming,” added the depute.

The matter came to light when the girl told her mum in June this year which led to the police being contacted.

Sheriff Francis Gill said, “This caused a great deal of distress which is ongoing.”

He imposed a community payback order with 165 hours of unpaid work and a three-year non-harassment order. Cosgrove was also put on the sex offenders register for five years.