Woman reveals ‘embarrassment’ at judge’s flashing

A WOMAN yesterday recalled her “shock and embarrassment” at being flashed on a crowded train by a man she later identified as a senior judge.

As she glanced down at the bottom of her newspaper she noticed the “very kind looking” gentleman had exposed himself.

The woman spotted the man on four separate occasions on the rush-hour trip from Raynes Park, south-west London, to Waterloo, and later identified him by video as Lord Justice Richards, one of Britain’s most senior judges.

Recalling the incident on October 16, she told the court: “Because I was embarrassed and nothing like this had happened to me before, I assumed this was an accident. I did not want to draw attention to the situation, to me or to the gentleman, so I carried on reading my paper.

“Sometimes the gentleman would adjust himself slightly, sometimes his genitals would be exposed and sometimes not as much.’’

Stephen Richards, a 56-year-old father of three who sits in the Court of Appeal, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of exposure.

It is alleged that he exposed himself to a woman on two separate occasions on a train between Wimbledon and Waterloo on October 16 and October 24.

Richards, from Wimbledon, south-west London, is charged with two counts of “intentionally exposing his genitals intending that someone would see them and would be caused alarm or distressed”.

Richards was very cooperative in his police interview, but stressed it was a case of mistaken identity.

He said: ‘‘It is a mistaken identity. I have committed no such offence. I confess to being a little surprised that three months (later) someone is saying I did it.

“I do not want to impugn the reputation of the person concerned.

“I am a judge I know whose responsibility is not just as an ordinary member of society, but also in my judicial capacity it is conduct I would not engage in.”

But Peter Wright QC, prosecuting argued: “It is the prosecution’s case that this was no mistaken identity. For inexplicable reasons, Richards took the risk of behaving in this manner on two separate occasions on a crowded commuter train, behaving like this to a young female.”

Richards has overseen a number of high-profile hearings and in January ruled in a High Court case brought by the family of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian gunned down by armed police who mistook him for a suicide bomber.