Toilet groper caught in flagrante in Salo

A 62-year-old man suspected of touching up two women in a toilet has a long criminal history

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In one of the strangest "couldn't make it up" criminal cases of recent times, the Police Department of Southwest Finland has caught a man who is suspected of having groped at least two women in a toilet through a secret hatch he had made himself.
      The suspect was caught more or less in the act at the ABC Piihovi service station in Salo last Saturday. The police arrested and detained the man but he was released already on Monday.
     
According to the officer in charge of the investigation, Detective Inspector Vesa Aaltonen, the 62-year-old Finnish man, who is apparently without a permanent home, has committed many kinds of crimes during his life.
      ”Should we say that the confusions of life are not unfamiliar to him”, Aaltonen notes discreetly.
      The suspect also has a record of sex offences, but it has not become known to the police that he would have used this modus operandi ever before.
     
The police suspect the man of two incidents of sexual touching. The first took place at a restaurant in Turku about a week ago, and the second occurred at a service station in Salo just before he was caught.
      In both cases, a hole measuring about 50 cm by 50 cm had been sawn in the partition between the toilet cubicles, through which the man had thrust his hand and touched the woman seated in the next cubicle.
      According to Aaltonen, it is possible that the man had made the holes already some considerable time before the incidents.
      ”If you place the missing piece back carefully, it is not necessarily that easy to notice the hole”, Aaltonen notes.
      In both cases, the man is suspected of criminal damage and sexual abuse. He has not been willing to take a stand on the suspicions.
      The police regard it as perfectly possible that the number of victims has been greater than the two women who have come forward.
     
According to Det. Insp. Aaltonen, these incidents have been unique during his career. The police are occasionally notified of peepholes made in the walls of toilets, but he says nobody has ever gone quite this far.
      ”These kinds of things never happen - and yet now they did”, Aaltonen shrugs in disbelief.
      The bizarre groping incident in Turku was first reported by the late edition tabloid Iltalehti.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Number of reported sexual offences on the increase (2.1.2012)

Helsingin Sanomat