A MENTAL health nurse who recorded men urinating in a public toilet at Cheshire Oaks has been fined and given a community order.

Sam Chi-Sum Cheong, 49, had admitted having 26 videos on his phone, all taken during a shopping trip to the Ellesmere Port retail park on June 23 last year.

But he denied a charge of voyeurism claiming that the footage was not ‘for the purpose of sexual gratification’.

During a trial in November, Cheong said he had stopped taking his medication for psychotic depression as it made him impotent and he and his wife were trying to have a baby.

This allowed voices – including that of his deceased father – back into his head telling him to go into the toilets and press buttons on his phone.

However, in the absence of any medical evidence explaining his actions or his loss of memory about the incident magistrates found him guilty of voyeurism.

At a sentencing hearing at Chester Magistrates Court on Thursday (January 9) Cheong was handed a 12-month community order to include 15 days of rehabilitation activity.

He must also pay a £50 fine, £620 court costs and an £85 victim surcharge, which goes into a national pot to support victims of crime.

Richard Sibeon, defending, stressed to the court that his client was a man of previous good character who maintained his actions were never about sexual gratification.

“It is an odd and unusual case,” the solicitor said.

“This is a man who has lost his good character and lost his employment as a mental health nurse. He will not work in that profession ever again. He continues to have the support of his family and his wife.”

Cheong, of Barnhurst Close in Liverpool, had been on sick leave since the date of the offence.