Judge gives naked gardener an ASBO

10:51am Saturday 3rd February 2007

COVER UP or face five years in a jail - that was the message from a crown court judge to a naked gardener from Pocklington.

Yan Price, 30, was handed an ASBO banning him from going naked outside his home after he mowed his lawn in the nude.

An appalled young mother saw him out of her bedroom window and Price ended up before York Crown Court yesterday on a charge of indecent exposure.

After a jury convicted him, Judge Peter Benson prohibited him from "being naked other than inside a building out of public gaze" under a 12-month ASBO.

The order will force him to stop his nude sunbathing as well as naked gardening.

Price had denied the charge, claiming he had started his lawn mowing with a towel round his waist and it had slipped.

But the jury believed a former near-neighbour who told them she had seen him wearing shorts on a Sunday last July as he started his gardening. Then he dropped the shorts. The young mother cannot be identified for legal reasons.

Price was fined £500 with £400 prosecution costs and will pay them when he finishes his current court fines for other offences.

His barrister Mark McKone conceded: "I accept that exposure is anti-social."

And Judge Benson said: "I am satisfied Yan Price is not the ideal neighbour." Earlier, after reading Price's lengthy record with numerous convictions for assaulting police, he added: "He is definitely anti-police."

Price was already under a separate ASBO banning him from speaking to his former neighbours, North Yorkshire police officers Tracy and Paul Rogers.

In the same trial, which lasted three days, the jury rejected the Rogers' allegations that Price had breached the ASBO protecting them. Price had denied a charge of breaching an ASBO.

After the verdict, the prosecution unsuccessfully sought an extra condition in the new ASBO forbidding him from alarming the Rogers.

The naked gardening occurred when Price was living in Scarborough. He has since moved to Pocklington. According to Mr McKone, the house where he lived is now up for sale.

Price said after the case that he could not understand how his naked body could cause so much offence that such an order was needed. "I'm very comfortable with my own body and often walk around naked. I don't see a problem with that. I do not intend to cause offence."