BBC producer who secretly filmed himself in bed with TV and radio presenters is jailed



BBC producer Benjamin Wilkins was jailed for eight months for secretly filming himself having sex with women

A womanising BBC producer who secretly taped a series of sexual liaisons with TV and radio presenters using a hidden camera was jailed yesterday.



Benjamin Wilkins, 37, hid the CCTV device in a smoke alarm directly above his bed to record his encounters with a succession of ten lovers. Another camera was hidden in a 'moveable ornament' in his bathroom.



The 'cool and calculating' broadcaster took the women back to his flat where he recorded them having sex with him.



Many of them hold senior positions in television and radio - both presenting and in production roles - but cannot be named for legal reasons.



Last night one of his victims said he had left her feeling 'violated, sick and dirty'.



He was jailed for eight months and was ordered to sign the Sex Offender Register for ten years after admitting 11 counts of voyeurism, including filming five women and setting up the cameras.



Judge Roger Chapple, sitting at Inner London Crown Court, told him: 'Parties to consensual sexual activity give consent to sexual activity in privacy, not for their very private acts to be covertly filmed for your later gratification.



'What you did represents a cruel, selfish and serious betrayal of the trust they placed in you.



'These offences were planned and deliberate. I do not sentence you for your sexual appetite or your morals, what I do sentence you for is the trust that you calculatedly betrayed.'



Wilkins was caught when his girlfriend - and mother of his child - discovered a stash of DVDs hidden in a box in his loft when she moved in. Each was labelled with the names of ex-girlfriends and colleagues. One had her own name on.



She watched one of the DVDs labelled with a name she recognised and, shocked, contacted the victim, a former colleague of Wilkins.



The two women went to the police together last July and Wilkins, who worked for BBC London for several years, was arrested in July 2008.



Police found his cameras were connected to a hard drive recorder in his living room - which he switched on when he wanted to start filming.



He later transferred the files on to his home computer, before 'burning' them on to a DVD.



He admitted recording encounters with five women at his flat in Brixton, South London, although police recovered more than 50 hours of footage featuring five more victims spanning three years from 2005.



Despite this, the girlfriend who discovered his secret is still in a relationship with him.



One victim said she needed counselling after learning of the sex tapes her former partner had made of them.



In a victim impact statement the woman, who had worked with Wilkins, said: 'Because of this case and the emotional effect it has had on me I know have trust issues with men and it's caused problems in my current relationship.



'I would have liked to have spoken to my family about what has happened but, because of the shame I felt, I could not do this.



'It has left me feeling violated, sick, dirty, and stupid because I trusted Benjamin Wilkins.'



Wilkins also lectured in journalism at the London College of Communication, where he met the mother of his child while she was studying there. He dismantled the equipment before the birth of their son in February 2008.



He resigned from his BBC job following his arrest, sold his flat for £270,000 and is living with his mother in Kingston, South-West London.



He admitted 11 counts of voyeurism at Camberwell Magistrates' Court last December.



One count related to installation, five of recording, and five of observing the sex tapes in relation to five women between January 2005 and July 2008.



In a letter read to the court, he said: 'At the time I was doing it I wasn't thinking about your feelings enough or how wrong my actions were.



'It was never my intention that anyone would get hurt. I now realise it was a terrible, terrible betrayal of trust and gravely unpleasant and dishonest thing to do.'



Wilkins, whose father Frank was a BBC cameraman, once won an award for local radio reporter of the year. His mother worked as an assistant floor manager on 47 episodes of Doctor Who between 1964 and 1988.