Guy Who Had Sex on Download Festival Ferris Wheel Found Out From His Boss That He Was All Over Web

Innes Miller, a 33-year-old civil engineering student, was fined £80 ($108) at Leicester Magistrates' Court on Thursday 10 September after pleading guilty to outraging public decency over sex on a Ferris wheel at Download Festival in June, the court heard.

The incident happened at the rock festival at Donington Park earlier this summer, when Miller and a woman were filmed having sex in a Ferris wheel pod.

Footage captured by other festivalgoers while fans waited for Guns N' Roses to headline that evening was widely shared on social media, prompting Leicestershire Police to appeal for help identifying those involved. Officers later said they had managed to track both people down from the clips and brought them in for interview.

According to details heard in court, the woman was said to have been apologetic when she spoke to police and explained what had happened. She was not prosecuted.

Miller declined to comment during his police interview and was already subject to a community order for a drug-driving offence at the time.

Prosecutors charged him with outraging public decency, and he appeared before magistrates in Leicester, where he pleaded guilty.

How 'Moment Of Madness' On Download Ferris Wheel Reached Court for Innes Miller

After a witness on the Ferris wheel reported the incident to Leicestershire Police. Prosecutor Sally Bedford told the court that the complainant had been on the ride at the same time as Miller, in a separate pod, with her young autistic son.

'She said she was mortified,' Bedford told magistrates, recounting the mother's statement. 'She said her son was in shock and since the incident, her son's behaviour has changed.'

Police investigated the incident after it was reported and after footage circulated online. Leicestershire Police confirmed that both the man and woman seen in the clips had been identified and interviewed. The woman took part in a voluntary interview, and police brought no charges against her.

In court, Miller's defence tried to cast the episode as a foolish spur-of-the-moment act rather than a calculated attempt to offend. His lawyer argued that other festivalgoers had largely treated the scene as a joke.

'Most people found it amusing, and a lot of them were clapping,' the court heard. 'You've got to balance that distress caused with what everyone else clearly thought was a moment of madness and funny.'

The lawyer told magistrates there had been 'no sinister intent to outrage public decency' and described the incident as an intoxicated lapse in judgement. Miller was said by his own defence to have been under the influence of alcohol.

The court was also told that Miller only realised how widely the footage had spread when his work phone rang after the festival. According to his lawyer, his boss called and told him: 'You're all over the internet.' That's how he learned a lunchtime thrill ride had turned into viral content.

Court Tells Innes Miller His Viral Shame Is Not the Sentence

Miller's lawyer argued that the online humiliation he had already experienced should be taken into account when considering his sentence. 'That in itself is punishment enough for what happened that day,' the lawyer said, adding that Miller was 'thoroughly ashamed and embarrassed.'

Chair of the bench Anne Cowan rejected the idea that social media notoriety should weigh in his favour. She told Miller that his having 'gone viral on various platforms' had 'nothing to do with the courts.'

Magistrates fined Miller £80 and ordered him to pay £85 in court costs and a £32 victim surcharge. The case also nudged into view the messy boundary between festival excess and criminal law. Guidance from Suffolk Sexual Health Service, cited in court, notes that having sex outdoors is not, by itself, a standalone offence, but warns that sexual activity in public can have legal consequences depending on the circumstances.

Sexual activity in a public lavatory is specifically prohibited under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. The precise offence and legal test depend on the allegations and the evidence available. Section 66 of the Sexual Offences Act covers intentional exposure of genitals where the person intends someone will see them and be caused alarm or distress.

Miller, however, was convicted of the separate common-law offence of outraging public decency, which prosecutors use for public acts of a lewd, obscene or disgusting nature that are said to outrage public decency.

At Download in 2026, the legal fallout sat somewhere between a slap on the wrist and a life-altering disaster.

Guns N' Roses returned to headline the festival on the Saturday, alongside Limp Bizkit on the Friday and Linkin Park on the Sunday, yet for a brief spell, clips from a Ferris wheel pod were competing for attention with the main stage.

The festival moved on, as festivals always do, and the internet mostly found new stuff to talk about. For Miller, though, the call from his boss and the quiet hearing in Leicester have already turned that 'moment of madness' into a criminal conviction and an £80 fine.