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13
Sept 2024
Man jailed for naked walk in Harrogate
A man who walked through Harrogate stark naked has been jailed for four months.
Daniel Barnes, 34, was spotted by a delivery driver on Ripon Road. They called police to alert them to the nude street stroller who appeared to be having a natter with the surrounding vegetation, York Crown Court heard.
Prosecutor Rachael Landin said it was just before 10am on June 22 when the driver saw Barnes “walking along the street completely naked”.
She said:
The driver contacted police and followed the defendant in his vehicle as (Barnes) continued to walk along the road, making no attempt to cover himself.
The driver was concerned (not just) for members of the public but for the defendant himself because (Barnes) appeared to be stopping repeatedly to talk to bushes and trees.
Barnes, who was “under the influence of various substances”, eventually walked into his mother’s garden where he was found by police. He was “still naked and sitting on the ground, mumbling to himself”.
When officers told him he was going to be arrested, Barnes replied: “For murder?”
He was taken into custody where he told officers he had “gone outside with the intention of provoking a reaction from (people)”.
“He said he got sexual gratification from having members of the public seeing him naked, particularly young girls,” added Ms Landin.
Barnes - who was formerly living in a homeless shelter in Spa Lane, Starbeck, but is currently of no fixed address - was charged with indecent exposure and admitted the offence after there were initially concerns about his fitness to plead due to his “severe” mental-health problems exacerbated by substance abuse.
10 previous convictions
The court heard Barnes had 10 previous convictions for 14 offences including making indecent images of children and a previous exposure offence for which he was given a 12-month conditional discharge in August last year.
In July 2023, he received a community order for damaging his mother’s property and assaulting an emergency worker.
He was already on the sex-offenders’ register following his conviction for downloading indecent images in May 2021.
His solicitor advocate Peter Minikin said in that instance, Barnes walked into a police station shortly after downloading the illicit material and “freely admitted” what he had done.
He said that Barnes had a “severe and enduring mental-health illness” but that when he was on medication he stayed out of trouble.
In May, just a month before the naked street walk, Barnes had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was discharged from the treatment centre just 18 days before the offence.
Mr Minikin said:
When he is sectioned for a short period of time and released back into the community, with no support, he ends up in crisis and chaos and does something like this.
In this instance, the driver was as concerned for him as he was for members of the public, given his talking to trees and bushes.
The Probation Service said that Barnes had become “unmanageable” in the community.
Recorder Mr D Kelly said that Barnes “appeared to have disengaged from all (mental health) services” following his discharge from the treatment centre in May.
He told Barnes:
There is a suggestion in the pre-sentence report that you deliberately behave in a way that will provoke your incarceration in order to escape your chaotic lifestyle.
He added, however, that Barnes hadn’t helped himself “in that you don’t always take your medication”.
He also noted Barnes’s failure to comply with community and probation orders and told him it was imperative that he “weaned yourself off substances” if he had any hope of rehabilitation.
Barnes received a four-month jail sentence, but he will only have to serve half of that sentence behind bars, minus the time he had already spent on remand, which meant that his release from prison would be imminent.
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