AN OXFORD couple were yesterday found guilty of engaging in sexual activity in a church graveyard in front of school pupils.

A jury at Guildford Crown Court heard that Andrew Donaldson told police that Reigate, in Surrey, where the incident happened, was “Stepford”, after staff at the school called police.

Donaldson and his partner Karen Waters, of Divinity Road, East Oxford, were caught enjoying an alcohol-fuelled romp between the gravestones at St Mary’s Church, Reigate, alongside the town’s grammar school.

Donaldson, 41, and Waters, 42, claimed they were sunbathing and had “a kiss and a cuddle”.

However, a witness told the court they had see a man’s naked bottom “going up and down”.

Donaldson, referring to a famous book and film about a fictional US town where the women have been turned into docile and submissive automatons, told the police: “God, this is bloody Stepford, this town. Surely public displays of affection aren’t illegal?”

He added: “I know they want them all mowing their grass at the same time, turning round at the same time, washing their cars at the same time, to pay their poll tax and being happy little citizens.”

The couple were living in Reigate at the time of the incident on April 22 last year.

They told police they had been sunbathing and had drunk two or three beers.

Waters said she often sunbathed there and her partner had joined her as he was off work that day.

Neither Donaldson nor Waters gave evidence in their defence.

Instead their lawyers relied on inconsistencies between the witnesses’ accounts, arguing the prosecution had to prove there had been clear sexual activity capable of causing outrage.

The jury cleared the couple of charges of outraging public decency, involving having sex, but found them both guilty of an alternative charge of causing outrage by engaging in sexual activity.

The court heard Donaldson had a string of convictions since 1988 for offences including criminal damage, fraud, shoplifting, advertising prostitution, drug possession and failing to stop after an accident.

Waters had been before the courts for trying to steal mail, fraud and drug possession.

Lionel Blackman, representing Donaldson, said: “This is a defendant who has, in recent years, turned his life around.

“He is someone who suffered from drug addiction, but in the last few years has stopped taking heroin.”

He said his client was now working shifts in a factory.

Sentencing of the couple was adjourned until Friday, February 11.