Secretly recorded friend in her apartment

By Jessica Magee

A man who installed several cameras in his friend’s apartment and secretly recorded her over seven months has been sentenced to four years in prison.

The 54-year-old man, who cannot be named in order to protect the identity of the injured party, was ordered to have no contact with her in any way for the next 20 years.

He had pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to one count of harassment, two counts of burglary and five counts of recording the woman without her consent over a seven-month period in 2021.

The court heard that the offences took place at a house in Drumcondra, where both the accused and the victim lived in separate apartments in the same house.

They had been friends for many years without issue until the accused, who acted as informal maintenance man for all six flats in the property, obtained a copy of the woman’s keys and installed hidden cameras in her bedroom and bathroom.

He broke into her apartment more than ten times and changed the position of the cameras, downloading video clips and screenshots which he then edited and stored, the court heard.

Passing sentence yesterday, Judge Martin Nolan said it was a “sordid tale” and that the offending represented a gross invasion of the woman’s privacy.

“To enter someone’s apartment and record her most intimate moments is reprehensible,” said Judge Nolan, imposing a headline sentence of seven to eight years.

He said the accused’s long, friendly relationship with the woman beforehand was an aggravating factor in the case.

Judge Nolan said the woman’s victim impact statement, which was not read aloud in court, was realistic and fair.

“She was totally entitled to her privacy. For his own reasons, this man became obsessed with the woman, and his misbehaviour was very serious and atypical. It’s hard to say whether he will reoffend,” said the judge.

Judge Nolan sentenced him to four years in prison.

Garda Karen O’Connor told Aoife McNickle BL, prosecuting, that the woman went to gardaí in December 2021 and made a statement after finding a camera in her apartment.

The court heard she had arrived in Ireland from overseas in 2008 and worked as a childminder.

She began renting an apartment in Drumcondra and told the accused, who was a friend of the same nationality, that there was a vacant flat in her building.

The accused moved into the building three years before she made her statement, and they shared normal communications between tenants.

The woman said she was confused when she got a text message from the man asking what her favourite colour was, to which she didn’t reply.

When the man asked again, she replied, “Blue,” to which he texted, “Oh, I thought it was pink.”

The woman was doing her laundry and realised she had washed pairs of pink underwear, the court heard.

The woman had a male friend to stay in November 2021, and the following day, she received an intrusive and lurid message from the accused, to which she did not reply.

She received similar messages the next day and began looking around her flat when she spotted a tiny camera on the door and started screaming. The woman put something over the camera and then got a message from the man saying, “Son of a bitch, don’t touch my camera.”

The woman threw the camera on the ground, and the man sent her messages giving out to her for breaking the camera and telling her to pay for it.

A neighbour confirmed that she heard someone moving around the victim’s apartment when the victim was not at home.

After the woman complained to gardaí, she continued to get texts from the man, and she moved out of the house.

Gardaí obtained a search warrant and seized a USB drive and SD card from his home containing a large number of photographs and video clips.

The footage of the woman in her apartment was dated between April and November 2021.

In many of the files, she was dressing, undressing, or coming out of the shower or bathroom.

The court heard that he edited some of the images, drawing love hearts around her private parts.

The accused was arrested and interviewed by appointment when he made full admissions and said he had obtained a key to the woman’s apartment without her permission.

He said he had installed cameras in her bedroom, bathroom, and main room and had gone into the apartment over ten times to change batteries and move the cameras around.

He has no previous convictions.

Simon Matthew BL, defending, said the man accepted full responsibility and had written a letter expressing genuine remorse.

The accused has been in Ireland for 21 years and is married with children overseas, to whom he sends €1,000 a month, the court heard.

Mr Matthews said the amount of content that the man had downloaded, edited and stored showed a “serious obsession” and “clear perversion”.

“The skewed nature of him giving out to her for finding his camera and breaking it shows that he was someone not in the right frame of mind. His sense of right and wrong was warped,” said Mr Matthews.

The court heard that the man has been an Irish citizen since 2013 and works full-time.

A letter was handed into the court from one of his employers commending his character and work ethic.