Edinburgh pensioner David Levenson admitted watching woman as she used toilet at McDonald's restaurant

He was confronted and chased by the woman at the time.

An Edinburgh pensioner was caught peering at a woman while she was using the toilet at a McDonald’s takeaway.

David Levenson was spotted with his head over a cubicle partition at the restaurant’s toilet at Waverley Mall in the capital’s city centre last year.

Levenson, 71, was confronted and then chased by the disgusted woman but he managed to flee the area before she could catch up with him. He then handed himself in to a local station following an appeal to the public by Police Scotland who had been alerted to the offence.

David Levenson was caught peering at a woman while she used the toilet in an Edinburgh McDonald's restaurant.

Levenson admitted the charge of observing the woman while she was in a state of undress at the takeaway toilet when he appeared in the dock at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Monday.

Fiscal depute Peter Finnan told the court the woman and her young niece attended at the McDonald’s toilets and entered a cubicle at around 11am on August 14 last year.

Mr Finnan said: “The complainer used the toilet while her niece stood and while in a partial state of undress she looked up and saw Mr Levenson looking over the cubicle clearly watching her. Alarmed by his presence she immediately challenged him causing him to duck into the cubicle he was in in an apparent attempt to conceal himself.”

The court heard the woman then confronted Levenson by banging on his cubicle door but he had “remained silent and did not acknowledge the complainer”.

The pensioner, from Canonmills, eventually left the cubicle and told the angry woman “I was just doing the toilet”. The fiscal added: “The complainer then pursued Mr Levenson to the Waverley Steps but he was lost to sight.”

The court heard Levenson then handed himself into the city’s St Leonard’s police station three weeks later following a public appeal.

Solicitor Kirsty Harper, defending, said: “Mr Levenson has not appeared in court all that much and my submission is that this is an opportunist deviant act.”

Ms Harper said she would reserve further mitigation to the sentencing hearing.

Sheriff Gillian Sharp placed Levenson on the Sex Offenders Register and deferred sentence for the preparation of social work reports to next month.

Levenson pleaded guilty to observing a woman doing a private act while she was in a state of partial undress within a toilet cubicle at McDonald’s, Waverley Mall, Edinburgh, on August 14 last year.

He also had a not guilty plea accepted by the Crown to a similar offence at the same location on September 25, 2021.