Top News

A "despicable" pervert who terrorised women on the Tube by pulling down his trousers has been jailed for 14 months. Ayman Yanoussi, 21, exposed himself to women at a station and on a train and tried to speak with several other women "within minutes on the same morning."

Yanoussi, who arrived in the country in 2016, had already been banned from approaching women he did not know in public at a hearing earlier in December, but he broke the order just 12 days later. On December 28 last year Yanoussi exposed himself to a woman whilst she was alone on a platform at Upminster Bridge in East London and masturbated in front of her before following her onto a train carriage.

He then travelled across London on the District and Circle lines, repeatedly trying to speak to women and then exposing himself to another woman between Baker Street and Goldhawk Road.

He was arrested at Hammersmith station after the second woman he exposed himself to reported him, Inner London Crown Court heard.

Yanoussi pleaded guilty to these charges on February 18.

At the time he was in breach of a suspended sentence which he had received just two weeks before, for secretly recording women with a camera concealed under his clothes at Bank Underground station on four occasions in April 2024.

He received a nine-month sentence for these offences, suspended for 18 months.

He also has a previous conviction for sexual assault for which he was sentenced in 2023, for slapping a woman's bottom in public.

Bespectacled Yanoussi appeared in the dock wearing a white sweatshirt and spoke to confirm his name and to acknowledge he had breached his suspended sentence.

Prosecutor Richard Witcombe said: "The offences all took place during the day on the same journey on December 28, with the first offence taking place around 11.20am."

Describing the first exposure, Richard Witcombe said: "The victim encountered Mr Yanoussi at the station in Upminster in the morning. She encountered Mr Yanoussi on a bench. She saw that his bottom was exposed, his trousers by the time she saw him were round his ankles. He was masturbating.

"A short time later she boarded a train, Mr Yanoussi boarded too in the same carriage. What then followed was a tube journey by Mr Yanoussi... when he made contact with women who were strangers to him and who were passengers."

Footage from later in the journey was played in court, the first clip showing a mostly empty tube carriage, with Yanoussi walking down and taking a seat opposite a woman.

More clips showed him trying to communicate with two more women, who both appear uninterested.

The judge noted that the third woman "gets up and moves away as if retching."

Mr Bowyer said: "The second and subsequent exposure was an hour and half later on the other side of London drawing near to Baker Street. The victim boarded a train that was relatively empty near the back."

Yanoussi moved to sit down opposite her, pulled down his tracksuit bottoms and began masturbating.

The victim confronted him and he denied he had been doing anything.

Mr Bowyer said: "She reported the exposure; in the minutes that followed he was detained."

The prosecution read from the personal victim impact statements, saying the women felt "shocked and disturbed" by what had happened and it had increased their fear for the safety of others, especially younger women travelling alone.

Defence counsel Natalie Turner said: "Mr Yanoussi wishes to extend his apologies to the victims of these offences. He's ashamed of his actions, nothing can excuse what he did hence his guilty pleas. He was born and raised in Spain and he came to England in 2016, he has full settlement status."

The judge Mr Recorder Jonathan Higgs told the pervert: "You understood when you were given that suspended sentence that if you breached it you would go to prison. You are a menace to women sexually. These are offences of frightening women, of enjoying frightening women. This kind of behaviour really troubles women, it makes them going out and living an ordinary life harder, that there are people like you going round terrifying them.

"You were given a chance on 16 December and you flatly rejected it. You say you were under the influence of drugs, but you weren't under it accidentally, that was a deliberate conscious choice by you. This was not a one off thing, you were still doing it an hour and a half later, frightening women in that way, intentionally approaching women."

He sentenced Yanoussi to 14 months in prison and said if he had been older or if he reoffends he will face "much longer" sentences.

Detective Constable Ian Hourihan said: "Yanoussi's actions that day were despicable. He sought sexual gratification on the railway at the expense of dozens of women and other commuters. I am extremely pleased to see him put behind bars, and would like to commend the bravery of the women who came forward to report his actions and support our investigation so we could secure justice.

"We believe that other women may have been targeted by Yanoussi that day, and I want to encourage them to come forward and report their experiences so we can secure justice for them too. If you've witnessed something similar or see any sexual offending on the railway network, I urge you to report it to us by discreetly texting 61016. We take every report seriously, and officers can be dispatched to intercept trains and arrest offenders."