A CABLE engineer has been found guilty of sexual exposure after stopping his work van in a secluded area.

Roger Snook, 45, denied exposing himself to a cyclist in public during an incident on Holme Lane between Wool and Wareham on July 23, 2014.

He claimed he had stopped to urinate.

During a trial at Dorchester Crown Court, a jury heard how Snook, a cable engineer for energy firm SSE, stopped his van at a lay-by on his way home from work.

Marcus Tregilgas-Davey, prosecuting, said before stopping Snook had seen a woman cyclist whom he had ‘stared at’ when driving past in the opposite direction.

Snook then turned his van round and overtook the cyclist, he added.

Mr Tregilgas-Davey said the cyclist then saw the defendant in the lay-by with no top on performing a sex act and looking at her as she cycled by.

Giving evidence, the cyclist said she felt ‘uneasy’ from the look the van driver first gave her and ‘scared, shocked and vulnerable’ after witnessing the incident itself.

She denied claims by Tim Shorter, mitigating, that she made a mistake.

The cyclist’s husband said she ‘didn’t seem her normal bubbly self’ when he met her afterwards.

Giving evidence, Snook denied performing the sex act, taking his top off or looking at the cyclist. He said he turned the van around to urinate, and he had stopped at that lay-by on previous occasions to do so.

But the defendant agreed with Mr Tregilgas-Davey that the lay-by was a five minute drive from his house and that he then turned around, driving away from his house, to stop at the lay-by.

Mr Tregilgas-Davey told jurors: “The defendant turned that van round because he liked the look of the fit female cyclist in Lycra, and he was going to do something about it.”

The jury took one hour and 20 minutes to reach a unanimous guilty verdict.

Sentencing was adjourned until April 2 and Snook was released on unconditional bail.