There is a truly bizarre case out of London where a former Ernst & Young manager was sentenced in what is viewed as largely voyeur case in the country’s history. Some 3,500 people were filmed by George Thomas, 38, who installed cameras in bedrooms and bathrooms in his own home, shower rooms and lavatories at his work place and bathrooms in a large number of coffee shops in central London.
Thomas wired up an elaborate system of surveillance to allow him to put together compilations of people walking in public areas and then in different bathrooms. This was all created over a six-year period that began in 2009. It all came to an end when a female colleague found a device in the shower room. The device had a memory card and captured Thomas’ face in the act of hiding the device. His arrest yielded more cameras and memory cards.
The Indian national is married with one child.
Clearly this bizarre conduct was treated as a fetish rather than a mental illness by the court.
He was sentenced to four years and given a Sexual Harm Prevention order for 10 years. The sentence may seem a bit light given the huge number of victims over such a long period of time. Such surveillance can have serious emotional impacts on people. It is always difficult to decided whether the sentence should reflect the number of insular crimes or victims or whether it should be treated as a pattern of similar offenses. Making this calculation all the more difficult is the fact that multiple cameras were used at multiple locations over a decade.
Do you view that sentence as sufficient for a crime that ran for such a long time and victimized thousands of people?
Source: Telegraph
My favorite ADD anecdote is that of a co-worker who graduated from the well-regarded Hastings Law School in San Francisco, yet failed CA’s notoriously tough bar exam. So she went to a doctor and got a “diagnosis” of ADD, which she presented to the CA Bar Examiners, and they allowed her an extra hour on her second attempt. Passed! Yes, it was a scam, but I’m doubtful of many claims of ADD. I think it is a combination of a testing/diagnosing industry which wants to keep itself in business, as well as indifferent teachers, and older parents who can’t deal with young children, as well as yuppie parents who can’t accept that junior isn’t a genius so they want an excuse. In the 60s, when I was a kid, there was no such thing as ADD. But back then, we had three recesses during the school day, and played outside after school. No sitting in front of a computer all day! And I was born to parents in their mid-20s, not their 40s. Finally, my dad was a blue-collar worker and we lived a very middle-class lifestyle with a stay-at-home mom and a new suburban house with a big yard. My parents thought it was fine if I grew up to be a carpenter, fireman, or any respectable occupation. College was fine, as well, not certainly not required. Somewhere along the line, we got full-bore immigration in CA, the population tripled in 20 years, it took two college-educated yuppies to buy a home in a decent neighborhood, and they had to put off having children until their late 30s or early 40s. At the same time, the demands on social services exploded with a massive population of poor immigrants, so the schools eliminated recesses, kids got fat and easily distracted, and their over-burdened parents preferred to have them labeled as ADD rather than accept that no, they wouldn’t all be Silicon Valley engineers or corporate lawyers.
TinEar – It is always hard to get people to recognize ‘invisible’ disabilities. ADHD is one of them. If I wore a crutch you would make accommodations for me, but if I have ADHD you do not see that as a disability because it is invisible to you. However, it comes with a host of problems, which if you are a student or an adult are difficult to deal with. And you deal with them 24/7.
Our local newspapers are full of news about crimes committed by people of foreign extraction. In Europe, crime rates among immigrants are around 200% of that of the native population, and here in the U.S. around 24% of all federal prisoners are foreign born.
The equality police don’t have much to say about this, nor do our media. Mass, indiscriminate immigration was never intended to benefit the immigrant but America. Nor was it intended to be an affirmative action program for the Third World. We continue to believe in the diversity myth, e.g. all peoples and cultures are absolutely equal and interchangeable, and there is absolutely no downside.
The greatest problem with this great social experiment is that it is irreversible. Once here, those who come are here to day, criminals and contributors.
My 5 year old nephew was labeled ADD at a public school in California. Fortunately, his parents had the sense to re-enroll him in a Catholic school, where he was “rediagnosed” as a normal, energetic 5 year old. Public school bureaucrats are lazy and would rather have their students in a drugged stupor than have to deal with the normal energy of young children, by providing physical exercise and activities.
Was Mr. Mackey the principal of the school where he was (mis) diagnosed?
TinEar – 5 is too young to diagnosis anyone. Besides, the school cannot require you to put the kid on drugs just to make the teacher happy.
Paul C. Schulte…….there was a great South Park episode dealing with the students diagnosed with ADD. I think it was the first episode where the character “Timmy!” appeared.
Hard to retrieve on youtube , now that Hulu, etc. have it.
Barking Dog: Moel?
the NSA prolly has terabytes of privately emailed and texted porn. Are they criminal voyeurs, since they have been conducting illegal surveillance? All the snoopers there should do some time too, maybe.
Not that this pervert shouldnt!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/26/nsa-porn-muslims_n_4346128.html
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/10/11/edward-snowden-nsa-spying-porn-habits-not-terrorists/
Is a person a victim if he/she is unaware of the intrusion? Thus if the “thousands of victims” are unaware that this guy had photographed them “taking a wiz” are they counted as victims by the court? Surely his co-workers who were photographed may feel a sense of outrage, embarrassment and or anger, and thus may properly be counted as victims, but what of the large number of people who were unknowingly viewed and recorded? I don’t know the law on this……
PCS: Since the APA bows to social pressures in its definition of psychological deviance, it would appear that all they have left is to label ever other energetic 3d grader as having ADD.
TinEar – ADD or HDD or ADHD should always be diagnosed by an expert in the field, not by the family physician. The problem is the classroom teacher sees an active boy and decides the boy is ADHD, when in reality he is just being a boy. ADHD is a diagnosis of exclusion. You have to exclude everything else it can be, then what it left is ADHD or ADD or HDD. And for everyone it is a little different. You have to have a certain number of criteria to make the grade (I think there are 15 and you need 12 or something).
Hidden cameras are a powerful tool.
And like any tool they can be used for good or for bad.
You don’t indict the tool, you indict the improper user of the tool.
Cameras have the power to illegally spy on private citizens who have an expectation of privacy.
But hidden cameras also have the power to put public officials in their place when they violate the law.
I have personal experience in this, catching CPS workers violating the law and Constitutional rights, and commanding the most outrageous and capricious demands of micromanaging parental decision making and authority, at the threat of taking children away from them.
No one would have believed me had I just relayed the story verbally, it can only be seen to be believed:
https://youtu.be/NIsnbUxAPhs
I don’t think that mental illness in any way mitigates his crimes. As an educated, highly paid E&Y executive he certainly had access to mental health care and certainly knew that his actions were illegal and socially aberrant. I’m fine with his getting mental health treatment while in prison, but he should still be incarcerated as punishment for his offenses.
TinEar – as others have made the claim, what is to say what is abhorrent today? Much of what was illegal when I was growing up is illegal today. Much that people would be ashamed of being caught doing, today they are bragging about it. And then there is the problem of mental illness. The APA said homosexuality was a mental illness. Now it is not. They said that alcoholism was a mental illness. Now it is not. They are running out of thing to treat people for.
The sentence does seem light considering the number of offenses. If I robbed 50 banks I would expect to get a larger sentence.
“While the behavior reflects mental illness,”
Not proven.
I think he is just a bad person who did bad things.
While the behavior reflects mental illness, the crime itself was not violent nor is it as despicable as the rabbis who install hidden cameras in the baths where orthodox female Jews must bathe on a regular basis. In that case, there is a special duty because religious trust is part of the crime.
Years ago “transgenders” were considered abnormal, now it’s all the rage.
Even pedophiles are now making a claim for normalcy here and in the UK.
No doubt voyeurs will be similarly exonerated by the relentless march of barbarism.
I bought my first pinhole camera for surveillance back in the early 90’s. It cost over 1k. I said to one of my colleagues, when these cameras become cheap there will be a lot of perverts taping people in bedrooms and bathrooms. You can now buy a pen, key chain, etc. camera for under $100. For everyone of these sh!tbirds caught, there are thousands still operating. I hope the paranoid here don’t have an episode w/ these hard truth.
The sentence was appropriate as there was no physical contact, no coercion, no force involved. The guy has a mental problem and needs help. In the US, depending on the venue, he might have been treated in a similar fashion. However, he would have been a sex offender for life. The real problem is with those that rape women, children, and men and then eventually get out. Someone who uses force to sexually assault anyone should be placed away from society for good. There are far too many cases where a pervert is released and then goes at it again, sometimes at the cost of a life.
BarkinDog,
Shyster – A person, especially a lawyer, who uses unscrupulous, fraudulent, or deceptive methods in business?
Now they won’t know at his place of employment just who it was who was pissing all over the back of the toilet and on the floor on a regular basis. The Donald needs to weigh in on this case. There has to be a Jewish word for it.
All he did was photograph or video the real things in life. Four years is outrageous. If CNN did this it would be glossed over. Explain what a “voyeur” is. I would like to see the statute itself. Oh, maybe the statute is private.
Four years in prison for a former Ernst & Young executive who is used to living a comfortable life will not be easy. In addition, he is only 38 years old and his professional life is over. I’m not sure what the “Sexual Harm Prevention Order” of 10 years refers to; perhaps some type of sex offender registry. So yes, I think the sentence is appropriate. I’ve long thought that America is an excessively punitive country. What would anyone gain by sentencing him to say, 20 years? Let him get out in four years and attempt to rebuild his life. If he hasn’t learned his lesson and commits another crime in the future, deal with it then.