April 2012

Married cafe owner who stripped off to greet teenage girls showing up for job interviews is spared jail

A married cafe owner has been spared jail after a court heard how he invited young women for an interview – only to greet them naked.

Disgraced David Richards, 53, texted young women aged 15 and 16, and another woman in her 30s, asking them to attend an interview at his coffee bar, Rioco’s, in York city centre in June last year.

But when the women arrived on separate occasions, they were shocked to find Richards naked.

Today at York Crown Court, the Recorder of York Judge Stephen 
Ashurst sentenced Richards to a three-year community order with a condition that he attends a sex offender treatment programme.

The court heard that Richards had sent identical texts to each of his victims, telling them what time they should attend the interview.

The texts said that the cafe closed at 5.30pm so he was likely to be downstairs in the basement somewhere so the interviewees should look for him, said Robert Galley, prosecuting.

When they found Richards in the partially-lit cafe, he was naked and ‘they 
saw his genitals’.

He was holding his mobile phone but not talking on it, Mr Galley added.

In police interviews Richards, of Wistow, North Yorkshire, claimed he had been cleaning himself as he had been working in the cafe’s kitchen all day

Richards, who wore a dark suit, striped shirt and purple tie for the 
sentencing, did not get any sexual gratification from the exposure, it was said.

After a ‘brief conversation’, Richards dressed and carried on with the 
interview.

The startled women unsurprisingly did not take up any job offers, the court was told. They were ‘significantly distressed’ after the experience.

Judge Ashurst said: ‘These three complainants were sensible enough to complain about what must have been a very embarrassing experience.

‘This was not a coincidence. It’s quite clear from you that you were 
intentionally exposing yourself.

‘The complainants took some comfort from the fact that the defendant accepted his guilt. They were significantly distressed.’

Mitigating, Chloe Hudson said that the family owned a number of cafes and had been struggling financially with ‘worries about bankruptcy’ for some time.

She said: ‘He hasn’t taken a day off work in the last four years and he hasn’t been significantly away from the cafe for the last six years.

‘This may well explain why this man, who has otherwise been a man of good character, has committed these offences.’

The court heard that Rioco’s is due to be closed in December this year.
Judge Ashurst added that Richards and his family had been ‘understandably affected by the publicity this particular case has attracted’.

He said that Richards had suffered ‘something of a breakdown from a build up of stress and anxiety’.

‘I think you have some way to go before coming to terms with what you have done,’ Judge Ashurst told Richards.

Richards changed his plea to guilty on the day of his trial, admitting three 
charges of indecent exposure.

He was also made subject to a notification of address order.