At his appeal Genevieve Reed, Mr Chandler’s defence counsel, said the women’s identification evidence should have been excluded because of a “chain of Facebook exchanges”.

She said another woman in the village had found Mr Chandler’s Facebook profile and taken a screenshot of his face after word of what happened to the two women had spread through the village.

The image had then been shared with others on social media until it was eventually shown to the two women who had been pursued by the man.

Ms Reed said:  “This circumvented all of the safeguards of (the Police And Criminal Evidence Act 1984) and fundamentally undermined the identification process.”

In addition, the court heard, there was “much pre-trial gossip on Facebook”.

Ms Reed said Mr Chandler had come under scrutiny “merely because he’s a loner who wanders round the village”.

Philip Anderson, for the Crown Prosecution Service, insisted Mr Chandler had received a fair trial, telling Judge Simon Oliver: “This is a small village and inevitably there will be gossip if someone is flashing at young women. Such gossip is difficult to prevent and it’s not unusual. Telling one person means the whole community knows it.

“It’s almost impossible to safeguard against and things like this happening is almost inevitable.”