Vaughan Neil Miller ruined more than just Christmas.
The 46-year-old was in Woodhaugh Gardens on December 25 last year when his victim was on a pre-dinner stroll, the Dunedin District Court heard yesterday.
He tried to engage the 68-year-old woman in conversation and when she became uncomfortable and walked off, he exposed his genitalia.
Miller asked the victim if she wanted to look.
She told him to "put it away", hurried off and called police.
Miller, it turned out, was a wanted man - he had featured in an episode of Police Ten 7 a month earlier, which suggested he was likely staying in camp grounds around the Bay of Plenty, 1300km from where he was eventually arrested.
The defendant’s spree of indecency - during which he terrorised two other women in their 60s - began in Tauranga in June.
In the shared kitchen of a campsite, Miller began talking to a woman while she was washing dishes.
When she turned around, she discovered he had removed his penis from his pants.
She quickly fled and stopped using the facilities but when she looked into the room a couple of weeks later, she found Miller there again in a similarly offensive state of semi-nudity.
Later that month, the defendant struck again, this time venturing inside the victim’s caravan while she was cooking.
Miller sat with his pants undone "attempting to get a reaction from the victim" but it was only the woman’s dog that seemed interested.
The pet jumped on to a chair next to the defendant and he stroked it while the victim fabricated a story about expecting her son over soon.
He repeated the strange performance over the ensuing weeks, the woman having to leave her caravan to get rid of him.
Miller only left the site in September after being confronted by the manager following another obscene exposure before a staff member.
"Each of these women have expressed the view they were uncertain what was going to happen next," Judge Peter Rollo said.
"[They were] insulted and offended by your actions."
It was not aberrant behaviour.
Miller was on release conditions following a previous stint behind bars for similar crimes at the time of the most recent offending.
While he put it down to alcohol use, the judge urged a more thorough analysis of his motives.
"There’s obviously something adverse going on in your personality that you continue to offend in this insulting way," he said.
Miller was convicted of four charges of committing an indecent act, two of burglary and two of breaching release conditions and was jailed for two years, two months.
