Serial burglar with cleanliness obsession spared jail after judge accepts he'd find it too dirty

A serial burglar was spared being locked up because a court heard his cleanliness disorder and other emotional problems would make it too traumatic.

Nathan Cassidy, 20, of Flack End, Orchard Park, in Cambridge, who had 14 previous convictions for 29 offences, was not given an immediate custodial sentence because of his obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).


Photo from here.

Mark McDonald, for Cassidy, said because of psychological problems, including OCD in relation to cleanliness, custody would have a “very traumatic effect” on him. Yet the court had heard how one of his elderly victims collapsed in shock after the criminal struck.

Cassidy received a 12-month sentence in a young offenders’ institution, suspended for two years and a two-year supervision order. Judge Gareth Hawkesworth, who asked how Cassidy could bring himself to burgle someone else’s home and touch their belongings if he had OCD, told him: “It’s clear to me from the psychological report you have a raft of psychological problems that need addressing.”