Thursday, June 13, 2013

Man admits filming 1400 secret videos

Judge Tuohy continued interim name suppression for the man who filmed up skirts of Wellington females (3 News)

A 36-year-old Wellington man and former Department of Internal Affairs worker has admitted making more than 1400 videos using hidden cameras, including almost 100 filmed up the skirts of women and girls.
Some of the videos were made in the streets of Wellington and others in a private bathroom.
The man, who has been granted interim name suppression, appeared in the Wellington District Court today before Judge Chris Tuohy facing six charges representative charges of making an intimate recording.
Police say he modified a laptop bag to conceal a camera, which he used to film up the skirts of girls and women in Wellington streets. The man would follow groups of girls he was interested in – some in high school uniform – getting close to them and covertly filmed them.
Police were alerted to his offending after a store security guard noticed the man attempting to film covertly.
They found data storage devices containing 1400 files believed to be intimate recordings made since February 2012. Among the recordings were 94 videos with covert filming of approximately 180 females.
The man used a camera in a private bathroom to film women in various states of undress, police say. The four women recorded on camera were all in their early 20s and one was the daughter of a family friend.
On another occasion he took his concealed camera to church meetings. He filmed up the skirt a female colleague from his church as they were knocking on doors and distributing literature.
The man's lawyer Andrew Isaac says he wants interim name suppression to continue "not just for the benefit of the defendant, but concerns of identification of some of the victims who are associated with the defendant".
Court documents state the offending occurred between February 2012 until as recently as March this year. The man, who has no previous convictions, was remanded on bail to be sentenced on July 24.
Detective Senior Sergeant John van den Heuvel says there is no evidence the videos have been traded or distributed and is confident all the man's videos and recording devices have been seized.
"This man's offending was serious, prolific and involved deliberate and repeated breaches of a community's trust along with the invasion of the privacy unsuspecting females in public," he says.
"His obsessive approach leads police to believe his offending would have involved many more victims had he not been stopped."
Police are not releasing the name of the church the man belonged to "protect the identity of his victims".
3 News Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:08a.m

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